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

In our age, self-indulgence and self-destruction, rather than self-sacrifice, are the foundations for new heroic myths.

It is human nature to want to believe in the wizardry of the magician--but also to turn against him and to scorn him the moment that he commits the slightest error that reveals his trickery. Those in the audience are embarrassed to have been so easily astonished, and they blame the performer for their gullibility.

If we were capable of thinking of everything, we would still be living in Eden, rent-free with all-you-can-eat buffets and infinitely better daytime TV programming.

The primitive in each of us climbs closer to the surface during the night, for the moon sings to it, and the cold void between the stars speaks its language. To that savage self, evil can look lovely in too little light.

But the more people we love and the more deeply we love them, the more vulnerable we are to loss and grief and loneliness.

Books showed me that there were other ways to live a life.