Writing sessions can last an hour or sixteen hours, depending on how it's going.

Happiness is not a life without pain, but rather a life in which the pain is traded for a worthy price.

Changing the world is good for those who want their names in books. But being happy, that is for those who write their names in the lives of others, and hold the hearts of others as the treasure most dear.

If only we were wiser or better people, perhaps the gods would explain to us the mad, unbearable things they do.

Quing-Jao: I am a slave to the gods, and I rejoice in it. Jane: A slave who rejoices is a slave indeed.

God, our genes, our environment, or some stupid programmer keying in code at an ancient terminal - there's no way free will can ever exist if we as individuals are the result of some external cause.

I'm not stupid!" In Bean's experience, that was a sentence never uttered except to prove its own inaccuracy.