“I think human beings have evolved to appreciate narrative, in the same way that we have evolved to learn language. What is narrative, after all, but a kind of super-language, where stories, like words, are ways of encapsulating information?”

“It's amazing to me that we humans have the intellectual capacity to ask deep questions and to devise methods for learning how the universe works and how its contents evolve with time.”

“We are what we think, having become what we thought.”

“We've also evolved the ability to simply 'pay it forward': I help you, somebody else will help me. I remember hearing a parable when I was younger, about a father who lifts his young son onto his back to carry him across a flooding river. 'When I am older,' said the boy to his father, 'I will carry you across this river as you now do for me.' 'No, you won't,' said the father stoically. 'When you are older you will have your own concerns. All I expect is that one day you will carry your own son across this river as I no do for you.' Cultivating this attitude is an important part of Humanism--to realize that life without God can be much more than a series of strict tit-for-tat transactions where you pay me and I pay you back. Learning to pay it forward can add a tremendous sense of meaning and dignity to our lives. Simply put, it feels good to give to others, whether we get back or not.”

“This is a Personal PoemMy self's self is thinking about itself.Trying to sell its self a new self.Don't worry, reader,I'm not trying to fool you with language,I have eyes to do that with.I have forgotten our history,I have forgotten how we met.Reader, are you upset at how fast we're moving?I'm likely with you in your bed,between your hands, somewherein your mouth beforewhatever it is you'll say next.Say yes and now and love too.Say what did Judith Butler say when saying, " … one is undone, in the face of the other, by the touch, by the scent, by the feel, by the prospect of the touch,by the memory of the feel."I want to know you, reader.I want to know a lot of things.Can we ever truly forget about ourselves?Is every self a self that makes itself available to love?Like death. And its kind availability.Like language, reader,would we still be so unhappy if we could escape it?To name the namelessness that is love, in what we read, and what we see,and what are feelings really?Facts or flaws,or something tells me nowthat I must leave you, reader.It's not you, it's me.We guess at why things end, we ruin things, we start and stall,and all all all we dois want.”

“There is nothing that is not both narrative and language. Even the paradoxical physics by which the universe is held together is both. We are ourselves story, just as we are language. That is the nature of both narrative and love.”

“It's not so much that I mind listening to her stories. Everybody likes to have an audience - that's why most people have kids, isn't it?”