“If it is true, as God says, that we are as we think, we risk becoming what we most fear if our fear is stronger than our love.”

“If sex is a skill, with its attendant expectations, frustrations, and failures, you are graded on performance; if it is an expression of love and commitment, you are not graded at all.”

“The nature of a true seeker after beauty is to overlook flaws.”

“No one can take credit for inspiration or creativity.”

“When God asks a question, it is always rhetorical.”

“Who but the Christian, among the religions of the world and throughout time, worships a God who loves him so much that he died an agonizing and wretched death to pay for his sins?”

“When man will return to nature, nature will return to him.”

“The sky is an enormous man.”

“When the full-grown poet came,Out spake pleased Nature (the round impassive globe, with all its shows of day and night,) saying, He is mine;But out spake too the Soul of man, proud, jealous and unr...”

“self-preservation is the primary and only foundation of virtue.”

“When you're surrounded by stupidity, self-preservation isn't a sin.”

“Sex can be used either for self-affirmation or for self-transcendence either to intensify the ego and consolidate the social persona by some kind of conspicuous embarkation and heroic conquest, or...”

“He didn't know all that much about how the machinery worked anyway. Such knowledge was for specialists. In war, as in love, he was a fearless, happy-go-lucky adventurer.”

“If she did experience sex--or something close to it--in high school, I'm sure it would have been less out of sexual desire or love than literary curiosity.”