“Religious experiences also occur only when emotions run high and only to those who were predisposed to believe.”

“We had little or no emotion. We lacked the capacity to feel fear, to experience love, to enjoy the sensations of happiness and delight.The finest warriors are not only those who do not fear, but those who are without anger.”

“how irrelevant the belief in God can be to religious experience—so irrelevant that the emotional structure of religious experiences can be transplanted to completely godless contexts with little of the impact lost—and when he had also, almost as an afterthought, included as an appendix thirty-six arguments for the existence of God, with rebuttals, his claim being that the most thorough demolition of these arguments would make little difference to the felt qualities of religious experience,”

“He loved also to think, "I did it!" And I believe the only people who are free from that weakness are those who have no work to call their own.”

“The only people who never tumble are those who never mount the high wire.”

“Fear isn’t only a guide to keep us safe; it’s also a manipulative emotion that can trick us into living a boring life … the great stories go to those who don’t give in to fear.”