“As grand and glorious as love is, it is not without its perils. Anyone who has felt the cruel pangs of rejection knows that love is best approached cautiously, as one would approach an angry, cornered brush-tailed possum. Yes, before throwing yourself into a relationship, it's wise to buy a sturdy pair of leather gloves, and to be extra careful of love's front claws and rows of needle-sharp teeth.”

“At the 150-minute point of sitting in a standard theater chair, the human buttocks die; once dead, they cannot be revived. They cease to function, whatever that function may have been, and must be carried around like a sack, or two, of flour.”

“Leaf blowers have taken a world which was, on the whole, a decent place to live, in spite of talk radio, and turned it into a noisy and unpleasant vale filled with atomized bits of vegetal detritus.”

“Think of the celebrated artwork on your fridge. Your best effort plus the love of the Savior is a masterpiece. It's not about outcome; it's about effort.”

“One can no more approach people without love than one can approach bees without care. Such is the quality of bees...”

“Creation is built upon the promise of hope, that things will get better, that tomorrow will be better than the day before.But it's not true. Cities collapse. Populations expand. Environments decay. People get ruder. You can't go to a movie without getting in a fight with the guy in the third row who won't shut up.Filthy streets. Drive-by shootings. Irradiated corn. Permissible amounts of rat-droppings per hot dog. Bomb blasts, and body counts. Terror in the streets, on camera, in your living room. Aids and Ebola and Hepatitis B and you can't touch anyone because you're afraid you'll catch something besides love and nothing tastes as good anymore and Christopher Reeve is [dead] and love is statistically false.Pocket nukes and subway anthrax. You grow up frustrated, you live confused, you age frightened, you die alone. Safe terrain moves from your city to your block to your yard to your home to your living room to the bedroom and all you want is to be allowed to live without somebody breaking in to steal your tv and shove an ice-pick in your ear.That sound like a better world to you? That sound to you like a promise kept?”

“The abbot told me once that lying was a betrayal to one's self. It's evidence of self-loathing. You see, when you are so ashamed of your actions, thoughts, or intentions, you lie to hide it rather than accept yourself for who you really are. The idea of how others see you becomes more important than the reality of you. It's like when a man would rather die than be thought of as a coward. His life is not as important to him as his reputation. In the end, who is the braver? The man who dies rather than be thought of as a coward or the man who lives willing to face who he really is?”