Every talent is unearned, however, and with it comes a solemn obligation to use it as fully and as wisely as possible.

In my personal life, I'm a comic novel. But then, so are we all, because we're human beings.

People who go to work every day, make sacrifices to raise families, and get through life without hurting other people if they can help it-those are the real heros.

Appearances are not reality; but they often can be a convincing alternative to it. You can control appearances most of the time, but facts are what they are. When the facts are too sharp, you can craft a cheerful version of the situation and cover the facts the way that you can covered a battered old four-slice toaster with a knitted cozy featuring images of kittens.

The things we worry about the most are never the things that bite us. The sharpest teeth always take their nip of us when we are looking the other way.

Every day we make our way through a moral forest, along pathways ever branching. Often we get lost. When the array of paths before us is so perplexing that we can't make a choice, or won't, we can hope that we will be given a sign to guide us. A reliance on signs, however, can lead to the evasion of all moral obligations, and thus earn a terrible judgment.

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