“We make attachments to what's familiar. We find the beauty, even in the lack. That's human. We make the best of what we're given.”

“And what makes us human is that sometimes we snap. And in that moment of release we're closer to gods than we know.”

“We're all strangers connected by what we reveal, what we share, what we take away--our stories. I guess that's what I love about books--they are thin strands of humanity that tether us to one another for a small bit of time, that make us feel less alone or even more comfortable with our aloneness, if need be.”

“We neither encourage nor discourage. We accept it. Accept it as we accept that spider web up there on the cornice. Given the nature of spiders, webs are inevitable. And given the nature of human beings, so are religions. Spiders can't help making symbols. That's what the human brain is there for - to turn the choad of given experience into a set of manageable symbols.”

“We don't choose the times we're born in, he says. That's the business of the stars. The only choice we got is what we do while we're here. To make it mean somethin.”

“It is what we make out of what we have, not what we are given, that separates one person from another.”