“Juliana's a year older than me, but she sometimes seems younger - mostly because she's the opposite of cynical and I'm the opposite of the opposite of cynical.”

“The opposite of the religious fanatic is not the fanatical atheist but the gentle cynic who cares not whether there is a god or not.”

“In the philosophical dialect, a cynic takes an insult as a compliment since opposition is already his style.”

“I used to think that paired opposites were a given, that love was the opposite of hate, right the opposite of wrong. But now I think we sometimes buy into these concepts because it is so much easier to embrace absolutes than to suffer reality. I don't think anything is the opposite of love. Reality is unforgivingly complex.”

“Sometimes… Sometimes doubt is the opposite of faith, but sometimes doubt can be a pathway to faith. Sometimes weakness is the opposite of strength, but sometimes weakness can be the pathway to strength. Sometimes addiction is the opposite of sobriety, but sometimes addiction can be the pathway to sobriety. Sometimes infidelity is the opposite of fidelity, but sometimes infidelity can be a pathway to fidelity. Sometimes failure is the opposite of success, but sometimes failure can be the pathway to success.”

“The beauty of “spacing” children many years apart lies in the fact that parents have time to learn the mistakes that were made with the older ones — which permits them to make exactly the opposite mistakes with the younger ones.”