“Your personality is so convinced that the habit thoughts running along with your body are you that it comes up with any number of reasons why replacing those thoughts is impossible. Even if those reasons can be addressed rationally, there is still an emotional component that is often reticent to admit that it is already talking to itself all the time. Repeating the same thoughts over and over, reacting to events in the same habitual way day in and day out, entertaining the same memories, most of which are based on pain and loss – the personality keeps the moment-to-moment awareness overwhelmed with the sense of a personal history in order to maintain the continuity of its artificial identity.”

“There's always a moment when you start to fall out of love, whether it's with a person or an idea or a cause, even if it's one you only narrate to yourself years after the event: a tiny thing, a wrong word, a false note, which means that things can never be quite the same again.”

“You like all animals at that moment, although no doubt you will one day choose your favorites. Your own nature will triumph. We are all born with our natures. You popped out of your mother’s belly, I saw your eyes, and I knew that you were already you. And I think back over my own life and I realize that my own nature--the core me--essentially hasn’t changed over all these years. When I wake up in the morning, for those first few moments before I remember where I am or when I am, I still feel the same way I did when I woke up at the age of five. Sometimes I wonder if natures can be changed at all of if we are stuck with them as surely as a dog wants bones or as a cat chases mice.”

“Unfortunately, some Christians don't look much different from non-Christian coworkers. They talk the same, have the same work habits, compromise on the same issues, and entertain themselves in the same ways as those who have never met God personally. In some cases, the only difference between Christians and non-Christians is where they spend an hour or son on Sunday morning.”

“Every father knows the disconcerting when you see your child as a weird, distorted double of yourself. It is as if for a moment your identities overlap. You see an idea, a conception of your boyish inner self...made real and flesh.He is you restarted, rewound; at the same time he is as foreign and unknowable as any other person.”

“Think of yourself, during your earliest childhood memory.As a teenager.The first time you fell in love.Your first job.Your finest moment.Your most painful moment.Your last day at work.Yesterday. Today. Now.Thru all of this- You are still the same person. No EVENT or PERSON can change the core of who you are. You are still the same person; wiser, much stronger and more beautiful than you imagine...”

“Question: would I do it the same way all over again? Absolutely - because I learned something along the way. Most people don't learn things alongthe way. Or if they do, they conveniently forget those things when it suits their need. Most people, given a second chance, fuck it up completely. It'sone of those laws of the universe that you can't shake. People, I have noticed, only seem to learn once they get their third chance - after losing andwasting vast sums of time, money, youth, and energy you name it. But still they learn, which is the better thing in the end.”