“I think we keep these moments of rejection and acceptance very close. I think we carry them always, like cracked shells from which a part of us once hatched.”

“We all have our moments of weakness. Even the best of us. Luckily, we have friends who keep us in line. I like to think we chose them because they're better than we are.”

“This is a book about questioning what others believe to be true, not accepting ideas just because famous people say they are right. I think knowledge is more like a wave than a switch. Only very rarely do we go from being totally wrong to totally right--as a light turns off and on. Instead, what we learned before allows us to move on to what we can see next. We can surf ahead, but there will always be another challenge, another crest, another setp. We must always keep thinking and asking new questions.”

“I think of the presence and of the habits of mortals in this so fluid stream, and reflect that I was among them, striving to see all things just as I see them at this very moment. I then placed Wisdom in the eternal station which now is ours. But from here all is unrecognizable. Truth is before us, and we no longer understand anything at all.”

“I really believe that our stories make us who we are. I don't think people are born as empty shells. They already have the makings of a personality and they have intelligence. But from the moment they're born and maybe before that they start accumulating stories and it's those stories that have the biggest effect on them.”

“Beauty is not always as perfect as we imagine it to be, but it can be damn close if we learn to accept the scary parts or the ugly parts.”