I think that every living person, every person who is awake to the functioning principles within his reality has a moment where he stops blaming the problems in the world on group thinking, on humanity and authority, and starts to face himself. I hate this more than anything. This is the hardest principle within christian spirituality for me to deal with. The problem is not out there, the problem is the needy beast of a thing living in my chest.

Meaningful stories have lots and lots of conflict. If we avoid conflict, our stories won't be meaningful.

I've wondered, though, if one of the reasons we fail to acknowledge the brilliance of life is because we don't want the responsibility inherent in the acknowledgment. We don't want to be characters in a story because characters have to move and breathe and face conflict with courage. And if life isn't remarkable, then we don't have to do any of that; we can be unwilling victims instead of grateful participants.

We believe we will be made whole by our accomplishments, our possessions, or our social status. It's written in the fabric of our DNA that life used to be beautiful and now it isn't, and if only this and only that, it would be beautiful again.

People love to have lived a great story, but few people like the work it takes to make it happen.

The inciting incident is how you get (characters) to do something. It's the doorway through which they can't return, you know. The story takes care of the rest.

I once listened to an Indian on television say that God was in the wind and the water, and I wondered at how beautiful that was because it meant you could swim in Him or have Him brush your face in a breeze.