"The novel we sit down to write, and the one we end up writing may be very different, just as the Jesus we grasp and the Jesus who grasps us may also differ."

"The great thing about getting older is that you don't lose all the other ages you've been."

"When we were children, we used to think that when we were grown-up we would no longer be vulnerable. But to grow up is to accept vulnerability... To be alive is to be vulnerable."

"A life lived in chaos is an impossibility..."

"Truth is eternal, knowledge is changeable. It is disastrous to confuse them."

"Maybe you have to know darkness before you can appreciate the light."

"If you worried about falling off the bike, you'd never get on it."

"Knowledge, like religion, must be 'experienced' in order to be known."

"No man will be a sailor who has contrivance enough to get himself into jail; for being in a ship is being in a jail, with the chance of being drowned."

"I'm lazy. But it's the lazy people who invented the wheel and the bicycle because they didn't like walking or carrying things."

"Every human is an artist. The dream of your life is to make beautiful art."

"Man, being reasonable, must get drunk; The best of life is but intoxication."