“That was the splendid thing about life: Though it was cruel, it was also mysterious, filled with wonder and surprise; sometimes the surprises were so amazing that they qualified as miraculous, and by witnessing those miracles, a despondent person could discover a reason to live, a cynic could obtain unexpected relief from ennui, and a profoundly wounded boy could find the will to heal himself and medicine for melancholy.”

“These days law thinks it's about nothin' but laws. Law don't remember it was once handed down from somewhere, that it once meant not just no, but was a way to live and a reason to live that way. Law now thinks nobody but politicians made it or remake it, so maybe it ain't a surprise some people don't care anymore about law, and even some lawmen don't understand the real reason for law.”

“There are people who want everybody dead. When you get over being surprised about that, you have a high amazement threshold.”

“The why of the mind's existence and the how of its profound capacity to reason - especially its penchant for moral reasoning - will by their very nature remain as mysterious as whatever lies outside of time.”

“When a liar became too skilled at deception, he could lose the ability to discern the truth, and could himself be more easily deceived.”

“The only way back from such a bleak despondency is to shape humiliation into humility, to strive always to triumph over the darkness while never forgetting that the honor and the beauty are more in the striving than in the winning. When triumph at last comes, our efforts alone could not have won the day without that grace which surpasses all understanding and which will, if we allow it, imbue our lives with meaning.”

“Books were this wonderful escape for me because I could open a book and disappear into it, and that was the only way out of that house when I was a kid. ”