“Desire is endless and unappeasable, is most intense where most forbidden, and is never far from despair.”

“Matter would have the universe a uniform dispersion, motionless, complete. Spirit would have an earth, a heaven and a hell, whirl and conflict, an incandescent sun to drive away the dark, to illuminate good and evil, would have thought, memory, desire, would build a stairway of forms increasing in complexity, inclusiveness, to a heaven ever receding above, changing always in configuration, becoming when reached but the way to more distant heavens, the last . . . but there is no last, for spirit tends upward without end, wanders, spirals, dips, but tends ever upward, ruthlessly using lower forms to create higher forms, moving toward ever greater inwardness, consciousness, spontaneity, to an ever greater freedom.”

“Certainty is not to be had. But as we learn this we become not more moral but more resigned. We become nihilists.”

“One can often recognize herd animals by their tendency to carry bibles.”

“God, you Jews are truly exotic."Exotic? She should only know the Greenblatts. Or Mr. and Mrs. Milton Sharpstein, my father's friends. Or for that matter, my cousin Tovah. Exotic? I mean, they're nice, but hardly exotic with their endless bickering over the best way to combat indigestion or how far back to sit from the television set.”

“Employ the power of positive quitting. Most of us view quitting as something negative, but it's not. 'Winners never quit,' we're told, when, in reality, winners quit all the time: choosing to stop doing things that aren't creating the results they desire. When you quit all the things that aren't working for you, when you quit tolerating all the negative things that hold you back, you'll create a positive 'charge' in your life as well as create the space in your life for more positive experiences.”

“The most intense joy, lies not in the having, but in the desire,Delight that never fades, bliss that is eternal,Is only your, when what you most desire, is just out of reach...Anthony Hopkins, from the movie Shadowlands, where he plays C.S. Lewis”