“I believe that if, at the end of it all, according to our abilities, we have done something to make others a little happier, and something to make ourselves a little happier, that is about the best we can do. To make others less happy is a crime. To make ourselves unhappy is where all crime starts. We must try to contribute joy to the world. That is true no matter what our problems, our health, our circumstances. We must try.”

“We are put on this planet only once, and to limit ourselves to the familiar is a crime against our minds.”

“We feel the same emotions for our ideas as we do for the real world, which is why we can cry while reading a book, or fall in love with movie stars.”

“If we are to love our neighbors as ourselves, we must regard their beliefs with the same respect our own deserve.”

“Because we are human, because we are bound by gravity and the limitations of our bodies, because we live in a world where the news is often bad and the prospects disturbing, there is a need for another world somewhere, a world where Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers live.”

“Cats make one of the most satisfying sounds in the world: they purr. [...] Almost all cats make us feel good about ourselves because they let us know they feel good about us, about themselves, and about our relationship with them. A purring cat is a form of high praise, like a gold star on a test paper. It is a reinforcement of soemthing we would all like to believe about ourselves -- that we are nice.”

“Fake it may be, lies and deceptions, but this is the world in which we find ourselves, and here we must make our little lives.”