When you go through life ... it all seems accidental at the time it is happening. Then when you get on in your 60s or 70s and look back, your life looks like a well-planned novel with a coherent theme ... Incidents that seemed accidental, pure chance, turn out to be major elements in the structuring of this novel. Schopenhauer says, 'Who wrote this novel? You did.'

Mythology tells us that where you stumble, there your treasure is ... The world is a match for us, and we’re a match for the world. And where it seems most challenging lies the greatest invitation to find deeper and greater power in ourselves.

The quest for fire occurred not because anyone knew what the practical uses for fire would be, but because it was fascinating.

The experience of eternity right here and now is the function of life. Heaven is not the place to have the experience; here is the place to have the experience.

This is an essential experience of any mystical realization. You die to your flesh and are born into your spirit. You identify yourself with the consciousness and life of which your body is but the vehicle. You die to the vehicle and become identified in your consciousness with that of which the vehicle is but the carrier. That is the God.

And then he says, "The writer must be true to truth." And that's a killer, because the only way you can describe a human being truly is by describing his imperfections. The perfect human being is uninteresting - the Buddha who leaves the world, you know. It is the imperfections of life that are lovable. And when the writer sends a dart of the true word, it hurts. But it goes with love. This is what Mann called "erotic irony," the love for that which you are killing with your cruel, analytical word.

Participate joyfully in the sorrows of the world. We cannot cure the world of sorrows, but we can choose to live in joy.