The body's pain is so paper-thin and insignificant compared to that of the mind.

When you're young, you think that sex is the culmination of intimacy. Later you discover that it's barely the beginning.

Never do I close my door behind me without being conscious that I am carrying out an act of charity towards myself.

..That's where we humans make a mistake. We don't see the utterly amazing when it comes to us disguised as the ordinary.

When you let your mind go blank,' he said, 'or when you stop talking for a long time, something happens. Time becomes different. It goes away. It doesn't come back until you start to say something.

The problem with anger against God is that it's impossible to go higher in the system to complain.

He boils milk with fresh ginger, a quarter of a vanilla bean, and tea that is so dark and fine-leaved that it looks like black dust. He strains it and puts cane sugar in both our cups. There's something euphorically invigorating and yet filling about it. It tastes the way I imagine the Far East must taste.