“This is what a self-centered religion does to us: it allows us to use it to further our own ends.”

“In the end, it is our defiance that redeems us. If wolves had a religion – if there was a religion of the wolf – that it is what it would tell us.”

“Contrary to what we may have been taught to think, unnecessary and unchosen suffering wounds us but need not scar us for life. It does mark us. What we allow the mark of our suffering to become is in our own hands.”

“Reading is accumulating knowledge. But not only that. Reading offers us every day what religion promises us for a posthumous and improbable future: the possibility of living beyond what our lifetime allows us to.”

“What destroys us most effectively is not a malign fate but our own capacity for self-deception and for degrading our own best self.”

“Instead of letting our emotions run amok with our minds, we can use our minds as tools that allow us to build realities that serve us better,and we attract what we are meant to attract because we are aware and self-empowered enough to choose most of the time.”