“If he was not exactly a Spartan, he was, you might say, spartanatical. Things happened to you; they were good,or they were bad - and that was the truth about everything.”

“If I were to say, "God, why me?" about the bad things, then I should have said, "God, why me?" about the good things that happened in my life.”

“God isn't about making good things happen to you, or bad things happen to you. He's all about you making choices--exercising the gift of free will. God wants you to have good things and a good life, but He won't gift wrap them for you. You have to choose the actions that lead you to that life.”

“He wants to say: First ofall, you were wrong about pop music. And art and all of pop culture. And all kinds of things.Because all of it matters. Even if it is awful. Everybody knows all the bad movies and the badsongs on the radio. Because it’s the only thing anybody has in common anymore. It’s all anybodyhas. So you were wrong about that and you were wrong about us and you were wrong about me,but he doesn’t actually say any of this out loud.”

“You never can tell when a bad thing might make a good thing happen.”

“The good things that happen to us were meant to happen, and the bad things that happen are lessons meant to teach us to be better.”