“I picture it like Judgement Day,' he says finally, his eyes on the water. 'We'll rise up out of our bodies and find each other again in spirit form. We'll meet in that new place, all of us together...”

“Vinegar: that's what fear smells like.”

“Her only thought was of getting away, as if she were carrying a live grenade from inside the house, so that when it exploded, it would destroy just herself.”

“Yet each disappointment Ted felt in his wife, each incremental deflation, was accompanied by a seizure of guilt; many years ago, he had taken the passion he felt for Susan and folded it in half, so...”

“It was the hat. He looked sweet in the hat. How could a man in a fuzzy blue hat have used human bones to pave his roads?”

“Rich children are always blond, Jocelyn goes. It has to do with vitamins.”

“Life, it turns out, goes on. There is no cosmic rule that grants you immunity from the details just because you have come face-to-face with a catastrophe. The garbage can still overflow, the bills ...”

“Not only is there often a right and wrong, but what goes around does come around, Karma exists, chickens do come home to roost, and as my mother, Phyllis, liked to say, There is always a day of rec...”

“In an earlier stage of our development most human groups held to a tribal ethic. Members of the tribe were protected, but people of other tribes could be robbed or killed as one pleased. Gradually ...”

“We stand at a crossroads. Do we choose 'the will to power' or 'the will to humanity,' or perhaps a new configuration of both: the power of humanity?”

“One thing I learned as a journalist is that there is at least one disgruntled person in every workplace in America -- and at least double that number with a conscience. Hard as they try, they simpl...”

“Create all the happiness you are able to create; remove all the misery you are able to remove. Every day will allow you, --will invite you to add something to the pleasure of others, --or to dimini...”