...the greatest source of misery in the world, the greatest cause of anguish and hatred and sadness and death, was neither disease nor race nor religion. It was hope.

...the greatest source of misery in the world, the greatest cause of anguish and hatred and sadness and death, was neither disease nor race nor religion. It was hope.

My point is that death is more tragic than life, than any life, because every life has hope of some kind.

Write something dangerous. Say something you shouldn’t. Blow something up. But well.

Expecting hell, we're ill prepared for heaven.

Anger and depression are not diseases or dysfunctions or anomalies; they are perfectly rational responses to the myriad avoidable disappointments that begin in a thoroughly irrational hope.

His intelligence only exacerbated the guilt Kugel felt for bringing him into the world. It was one thing to have condemned a child to life, that was criminal enough, but life was a sentence more easily served by fools.