“My father was one of those men who sit in a room and you can feel it: the simmer, the sense of some unpredictable force that might, at any moment, break loose, and do something terrible. [Burnside,...”

“As I child, I came to this idea with a horrified fascination. Once upon a time, I wasnt here. Before that, my parents werent here. And before that”

“All you have to do is choose the right day, the right weather, and you come upon a hidden place in the morning light where time stopped long before you were born”

“There are days when that dark face is something I can think of as a friend a primal energy that carries me forward when nothing else will but more often than not I am face-to-face with a stranger...”

“Everything stayed hidden [] it was all secret known by anyone who cared to know, but unacknowledged, like a priests feverish brightness around adolescent boys, or the beatings Mrs Wilson endured o...”

“When Mother had told me that animals found quiet, unexposed places to die, I had always imagined they knew they were dying, and accepted it, almost gracefully. Now I saw that this wasn't so at all:...”

“Joy is the realest reality, the fullest life, and joy is always given, never grasped. God gives gifts and I give thanks and I unwrap the gift given: joy.”

“People dont realize, he said, how important it is to wake up every morning with a song in your heart. J. Krishnamurti. The song stands for a sense of joy in existence, a joy that is free of any goo...”

“It is beyond a doubt that everyone should have time for some special delight, if only five minutes each day to seek out a lovely flower or cloud or star, or learn a verse to brighten anothers dull ...”

“It is better to be hated for what you are than to be loved for what you are not.”

“If I am going to be drownedif I am going to be drownedif I am going to be drowned, why, in the name of the seven mad gods who rule the sea, was I allowed to come thus far and contemplate sand and t...”

“I'm an Earth ecstatic, and my creed is simple: All life is sacred, life loves life, and we are capable of improving our behavior toward one another. As basic as that is, for me it's also tonic and ...”

“This, in the end, is the prime purpose of a philosophy: to give us lucid ways to think about the world and how to live in it.”

“An atheist waving a cross at a vampire was a truly pitiful sight.”