Everybody is identical in their secret unspoken belief that way deep down they are different from everyone else.

We are not dead but asleep, dreaming of ourselves.

Talent is its own expectation, Jim: you either live up to it or it waves a hankie, receding forever.

[I]f the writer does his job right, what he basically does is remind the reader of how smart the reader is.

Our attachments are our temple, what we worship, no? What we give ourselves to, what we invest with faith. . . . Attachments are of great seriousness. Choose your attachments carefully. Choose your temple of fanaticism with great care.

There is no such thing as not worshipping. Everybody worships. The only choice we get is what to worship. And an outstanding reason for choosing some sort of God or spiritual-type thing to worship - be it J.C. or Allah, be it Yahweh or the Wiccan mother-goddess or the Four Noble Truths or some infrangible set of ethical principles - is that pretty much anything else you worship will eat you alive.

sarcasm and jokes were often the bottle in which clinical depressives sent out their most plangent screams for someone to care and help them.