“People who know what kind of new world they want to create through revolution are trouble enough; those who only know what they want to destroy are a curse.”

“I wanted to cast doubt on the step he was about to take, to help him see there are other ways to live, other ways to seek knowledge, love...even self-transformation. I wanted to convince him his dignity depended on maintaining a free, skeptical attitude towards doctrine. I wanted...to save him...Doubt, like faith, has to be learned. It is a skill. But the curious thing about skepticism is that its adherents, ancient and modern, have so often been proselytizers. In reading them, I've often wanted to ask: "Why do you care?" Their skepticism offers no good answer to that question.”

“I can help anyone get anything they want out of life. The only problem is that I can't find anyone who knows what they want.”

“What if I have it all upside down? What if I'm the one who knows nothing of God, and the people in the world are actually interceding on my behalf with their ordinary daily struggles”

“And all of us watching her are standing there staring at her. . .and no one who knows what they’ve just witnessed wants to make eye contact with anyone else alive. . . .”

“The trouble with the world is not that people know too little; it's that they know so many things that just aren't so. ”

“Don’t you know what that is? It’s spring fever. That is what the name of it is. And when you’ve got it, you want—oh, you don’t quite know what it is you DO want, but it just fairly makes your heart ache, you want it so!”