“There's no tragedy in nature, only process -- and therefore no triumph, either.”

“The only way we'll be saved is if we save ourselves. Good people can't triumph over bad people just by being good; they have to act.”

“Six billion of us walking the planet, six billion smaller worlds on the bigger one. Shoe salesmen and short-order cooks who look boring from the outside - some have weirder lives than you. Six billion stories, every one an epic, full of tragedy and triumph, good and evil, despair and hope. You and me - we aren't so special, bro.”

“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.”

“There's always a parade, Howie. When it's something you can't ever join but only watch, then it's a parade”

“In tragedy and despair, when an endless night seems to have fallen, hope can be found in the realization taht the companion of night is not another night, that the companion of night is day, that darkness always gives way to light, and that death rules only half of creation, life the other half.”

“We're out of cocktail olives, it's a tragedy of historic proportions, but we're coping because we're Americans.”