“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...”

“The problem with cats is that they get the same exact look whether they see a moth or an ax-murderer.”

“The name Alaska is probably an abbreviation of Unalaska, derived from the original Aleut word agunalaksh, which means "the shores where the sea breaks its back." The war between water and land is n...”

“If you have to ask that question, you wouldn't understand the answer.”

“Theres a landoh, it beckons and beckons, And I want to go backand I will.”

“Someone I loved once gave me a box full of darkness. It took me years to understand that this too, was a gift.”

“Dont try to fit me in a box My life is not one dimensional. Im the summer breeze and the hurricane Im the serene lake and the raging ocean Im the gentle poet and the rough warrior I can build and I...”

“Hope always comes after evil has done its work. We cannot keep living on hope, though. (Box of Pandora)”

“I was awakened by a tremendous earthquake, and though I hadn ever before enjoyed a storm of this sort, the strange thrilling motion could not be mistaken, and I ran out of my cabin, both glad and f...”

“An afternoon drive from Los Angeles will take you up into the high mountains, where eagles circle above the forests and the cold blue lakes, or out over the Mojave Desert, with its weird vegetation...”

“Chiron looked surprised. I thought that would be obvious enough. The entrance to the Underworld is in Los Angeles.”