It's an awful truth that suffering can deepen us, give a greater lustre to our colours, a richer resonance to our words. That is, if it doesn't destroy us, if it doesn't burn away the optimism and the spirit, the capacity for visions, and the respect for simple yet indispensable things.

I don't like myself you know. I love myself. I'm devoted to myself till my dying day. But I don't like myself.

When you find out there is no ultimate good and evil in which you can place your faith, the world does not fall apart at the seams. It simply means that every decision is more difficult, more critical, because you are creating the good and evil yourself and they are very real.

My conscience is killing me, isn't it? And when you're immortal that can be a really long and ignominious death

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.

He had never expected death to be this quiet, this secretive, this easy.

What is fear after all? It is indecision. You seek some way to resist, escape. There is none.