“People need each other. Our well-being is tightly tethered to the well-being of people we do not know, most of whom look nothing like ourselves. Happiness, I realized right there in breathing class...”

“Deep-rooted happiness may require a sense of purpose. If I don't feel that I am in some small way contributing to the greater good, holding on to happiness is like carrying water in my hands.”

“The wages of sin are death, but by the time taxes are taken out, it's just sort of a tired feeling.”

“It is my wish to die of unique causes, perhaps in a high-speed tricycle crash, a bizarre stapling incient, or as a result of inadvertently sucking my brains out through my ear while trying to untwi...”

“There are those wonderful moments of clarity in life when one is reminded how irreparably flawed we humans are. Once, when I was nineteen, on the subway in Boston I lost my balance slightly and bum...”

“I fall short of her standards. She made me buy cat food that hasn't been tested on animals. My cats took one bite of it, spit it out, and yelled, "Did no one test this?”

“Even the Middle Ages, which condemned and punished animals in due form, was in this way much closer to them than we are. They held them to be guilty: which was a way of honoring them. We take them ...”

“The clearest way into the Universe is through a forest wilderness.”

“Until one has loved an animal, a part of one's soul remains unawakened.”

“What greater gift than the love of a cat.”

“After all, a woman who doesn't love cats is never going to be make a man happy.”

“If cats looked like frogs we'd realize what nasty, cruel little bastards they are. Style. That's what people remember.”