-You are on the verge of being truly mad. -No, not at all. Look at me. I can tie my shoelaces. See?

When you make his sandwiches, put a sexy or loving note in his lunch box.

Don't be a fool for the Devil, darling.

When I realized that Reuben was a young man who really wanted to be taken seriously, because he was dismissed for being too good looking or because he had too much money - his character really came to life for me. I began to understand that, and see that a lot of people feel this way - misunderstood because of their talents or gifts or background.

I assume as a child Jesus had to learn how to do carpentry, learn Torah, learn all the things a human child had to learn. If He was human in all ways except that He did not sin, this must have been the case.

In spite of all the refinements of civilization that conspired to make art--the dizzying perfection of the string quartet or the sprawling grandeur of Fragonard's canvases--beauty was savage. It was as dangerous and lawless as the earth had been eons before man had one single coherent thought in his head or wrote codes of conduct on tablets of clay. Beauty was a Savage Garden.

I'm hoping what all sentient beings hope ... that somehow I'm part of something larger than myself, in which I play a role, an actual role that is somehow intended and meaningful.