The less depth a belief system has, the greater the fervency with which its adherents embrace it. The most vociferous, the most fanatical are those whose cobbled faith is founded on the shakiest grounds.

We are an arrogant species, full of terrible potential, but we also have a great capacity for love, friendship, generosity, kindness, faith, hope, and joy.

Perhaps extreme danger strips us of all pretenses, all ambitions, all confusions, focusing us more intensely than we are otherwise ever focused, so that we remember what we otherwise spend most of our lives forgetting: that our nature and purpose is, more than anything else, to love and to make love, to take joy from the beauty of the world, to live with an awareness that the future is not as real a place for any of us as are the present and the past.

I can love October in September. September doesn’t care.

I'll sit in the park and feed the pigeons for a while.' We don't have pigeons.' Then I'll feed the pterodactyls.

I've got a long list of books I wish I'd never written-and I've kept them all out of print for the past 20 years.

Fear is a poison produced by the mind, and courage is the antidote stored always ready in the soul