At birth, we emerge from dream soup. At death, we sink back into dream soup. In between soups, there is a crossing of dry land. Life is a portage.

Disbelief in magic can force a poor soul into believing in government and business.

There are many things worth living for, a few things worth dying for, and nothing worth killing for.

When humans were young, they were pushed around in strollers. When they were old, they were pushed around in wheelchairs. In between, they were just pushed around.

For most people, self-awareness and self-pity blossom simultaneously in early adolescence. It's about that time that we start viewing the world as something other than a whoop-de-doo playground, we start to experience personally how threatening it can be, how cruel and unjust. At the very moment when we become, for the first time, both introspective and socially conscientious, we receive the bad news that the world, by and large, doesn't give a rat's ass.

I'll bet I'm as old as you are." "I'm older than Sanskrit." "Well, I was waitress at the Last Supper." "I'm so old I remember when McDonald's had only sold a hundred burgers." "You win.

...to emphasize the afterlife is to deny life. To concentrate on Heaven is to create hell. In their desperate longing to transcend the disorderliness, friction, and unpredictability that pesters life; in their desire for a fresh start in a tidy habitat, germ-free and secured by angels, religious multitudes are gambling the only life they may ever have on a dark horse in a race that has no finish line.