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

He said, if you allow yourself to be enchanted by the beauty to be seen in even ordinary things, then all things proved to be extraordinary.

When new hopes fail, old hopes return in the endless cycle of desperation.

I think it's perfectly just to refuse service to anyone based on behavior, but not based on race or religion.

The truth was stranger than the official fiction.

Sometimes it seemed that the human heart, this side of Eden, feared life more than death, light more than darkness, freedom more than surrender.

I imagined a life that turned out to be pretty much exactly like the one I've had. That fascinates me endlessly. I wake up many mornings, and it almost wouldn't surprise me if I woke up from it and it was all a dream.