“Every job from the heart is, ultimately, of equal value. The nurse injects the syringe; the writer slides the pen; the farmer plows the dirt; the comedian draws the laughter. Monetary income is the...”

“What is hard work? It takes strength, energy, and stress to truly care about others enough to place oneself last, but it is easy to wrap oneself up and selfishly scramble on the heads of others.”

“Most men either compromise or drop their greatest talents and start running after, what they perceive to be, a more reasonable success, and somewhere in between they end up with a discontented sett...”

“I would rather a romantic relationship turn into contempt than turn into apathy. The passion in the extremities make it appear as though it once meant something. We grow from hot or cold, but lukew...”

“It often occurs that pride and selfishness are muddled with strength and independence. They are neither equal nor similar; in fact, they are polar opposites. A coward may be so cowardly that he mas...”

“I do not care about happiness simply because I believe that joy is something worth fighting for.”

“I would not say I was a nonbeliever; rather, that I gave little if any thought to celestial concerns. It did not seem to me that God, whoever he was, would be the sort of god to take an interest in...”

“In my experiences, the common critic of Christianity, when he thinks of Christianity, imagines a sort of elementary, Sunday School blunder of elements: fiery Hell, an angry God, 'try not to sin', '...”

“Mario, what do you get when you cross an insomniac, an unwilling agnostic and a dyslexic?""I give.""You get someone who stays up all night torturing himself mentally over the question of whether or...”

“There are two types of seeds in the mind: those that create anger, fear, frustration, jealousy, hatred and those that create love, compassion, equanimity and joy. Spirituality is germination and sp...”

“My music teacher offered twittering madrigals and something about how, in Italy, in Italy, the oranges hang on the tree. He treated me - the humiliation of it - as a soprano.These, by contrast, are...”

“If you spend your time hoping someone will suffer the consequences for what they did to your heart, then you're allowing them to hurt you a second time in your mind.”

“You may go over the world and you will find that every form of religion which has breathed upon this earth has degraded woman... I have been traveling over the old world during the last few years a...”

“I suppose that one reason I have always detested religion is its sly tendency to insinuate the idea that the universe is designed with 'you' in mind or, even worse, that there is a divine plan into...”

“Religious belief is without reason and without dignity, and its record is near-universally dreadful.”