Loneliness comes in two basic varieties. When it results from a desire for solitude, loneliness is a door we close against the world. When the world instead rejects us, loneliness is an open door, unused.

I fall down on the side of free will, simply because if you look at where I came from, and what I was able to do in my life, what was able to happen.

Where there is cake, there is hope. And there is always cake.

I do give books as gifts sometimes, when people would rather have one than a new Ferrari.

Books had shown me, however, that all people everywhere wanted their lives to have purpose and meaning. This longing was universal.

The human species was too fond of lying, cheating, envy, ignorance, self-pity, self-righteousness, and utopian visions that always led to mass murder-but until and if it destroyed itself, it harbored the potential to become nobler, to take responsibility for its actions, to live and let live, and to earn the stewardship of the earth.

Hope, however, isn't all that's needed to achieve change. Hope is a hand extended, but two hands are required to be pulled out of this deep hole. The second hand was faith.