The unhappy person resents it when you try to cheer him up, because that means he has to stop dwelling on himself and start paying attention to the universe. Unhappiness is the ultimate form of self-indulgence. When you're unhappy, you get to pay a lot of attention to yourself. You get to take yourself oh so very seriously.

Not naive,' Conch shell had corrected him. 'He simply has not been taught to fear the things you fear.

All dreams continue in the beyond.

The human race has always defined itself through narration. That isn't going to change just because we've gone electronic. What is changing is that now we're allowing corporations to tell our stories for us.

If one yearns to see the face of the Divine, one must break out of the aquarium, escape the fish farm, to go swim up wild cataracts, dive in deep fjords. One must explore the labyrinth of the reef, the shadows of the lily pads. How limiting, how insulting to think of God as a benevolent warden, an absentee hatchery manager who imprisons us in the 'comfort' of artificial pools, where intermediaries sprinkle our restrictive waters with sanitized flakes of processed nutriment.

Breathe properly. Stay curious. And eat your beets.

John Irving once told me he doesn't start a novel until he knows the last sentence. I said, 'My God, Irving, isn't that like working in a factory?'