“Unexpected intrusions of beauty. This is what life is.”

“You have to have the power to employ pain, to repent, to be illuminated, you must have the opportunity and even the time.”

“With one long breath, caught and held in his chest, he fought his sadness over his solitary life. Don't cry, you idiot! Live or die, but don't poison everything...”

“But then why shouldn't he write the dead? He lived with them as much as with the living - perhaps more; and besides, his letters to the living were increasingly mental, and anyway, to the Unconscio...”

“If I'm out of my mind, it's all right with me, thought Moses Herzog.”

“Moses loved his relatives quite openly and even helplessly . . . It was childish of him; he knew that. He could only sigh at himself, that he should be so undeveloped on that significant side of hi...”

“There comes a time in your life when you have to choose to turn the page, write another book or simply close it.”

“I live alone," he said simply. "I live in the open. I hear the waves at night and see the black patterns of the pine boughs against the sky. With sound and silence and color and solitude, of course...”

“It is difficult to undo our own damage, and to recall to our presence that which we have asked to leave. It is hard to desecrate a grove and change your mind. The very holy mountains are keeping mu...”

“The power of music, whether joyous or cathartic must steal on one unawares, come spontaneously as a blessing or a grace--”

“. . .from their earliest years children live on familiar terms with disrupting emotions, fear and anxiety are an intrinsic part of their everyday lives, they continually cope with frustrations as b...”

“Each new day begins with a meditation, and ends with a purifying catharsis.”

“Fear is a vile thing, and is at the bottom of almost every wrong and hatred of the world.”

“Courage consists not in hazarding without fear but being resolutely minded in a just cause. ”

“Figure out your passion. What floats your boat, rings your bell, lights your tree? A life without passion is possible, but not desirable. Have you really lived at all if you have not lived with pas...”