“Plato offers the amazing idea that contemplation of the way things really are is, in itself, a purifying process that can bring human beings into the only divinity there is.”

“Prayer is based on the remote possibility that someone is actually listening; but so is a lot of conversation. If the former seems far-fetched, consider the latter: even if someone is listening to your story, and really hearing, that person will disappear from existence in the blink of a cosmic eye, so why bother to tell this perhaps illusory and possibly un-listening person something he or she is unlikely to truly understand, just before the two of you blip back out of existence? We like to talk to people who answer us, intelligently if possible, but we do talk without needing response or expecting comprehension. Sometimes, the event is the word, the act of speaking. Once we pull that apart a bit, the action of talking becomes more important than the question of whether the talking is working-because we know, going in, that the talking is not working. That said, one might as well pray.”

“How was life before Pop-Tarts, Prozac and padded playgrounds? They ate strudel, took opium and played on the grass.”

“Get this straight, you can use a Leopard in a mission, you can send him out to kill for you. Hell, you can even fuck one. The one thing you can never, ever do is trust one. Leopards by nature are cold, emotionless and psychotic. They were made with one purpose and that was to destroy others. So whatever you do, don’t turn your back on one and you sure as hell don’t fall in love with one of the batshit, crazy loons - Carson to Trevor about Shane”

“We do not accept a religion because it offers us certain rewards. The only thing that a religion can offer us is to be just what it, in itself, is: a greater meaning in ourselves, in our lives, and in our grasp of the nature of things...a religion exists for us only if, like a piece of poetry, it carries us away. It is not in any sense a 'hypothesis.”

“Only when you are dangerous are you truly equal to the world.”

“I've been the way he's being now, acting tough about things that really hurt me, and I can see right through to the truth. ”