…because wherever else the future leads, it leads ultimately to death, the end that is present in my beginning and in yours.

…up to no good—and pleased about it.

Pico Mundo is a prosperous town. But no degree of prosperity can be sufficient to eliminate all misfortune, and sloth is impervious to opportunity.

Hope, love and faith are in the waiting.

If you’re going to keep the music in you, Jonah, you’ve got to play a little bit every day purely for pleasure. Otherwise, you’ll lose the joy of it, and if you lose the joy,...

Whatever happens here, trust your heart. It’s as true as any compass.

All but universally, human architecture values front elevations over back entrances, public spaces over private. Danny Jessup says that this aspect of architecture is also a reflection of human nature, that most people care more...

My imagination is as rich as my bank account is empty.

The world needed a little Evil, so Good had something to compare itself to, but you couldn’t let it think it had the right-of-way on the road and an invitation to dinner.

Hell of a thing to have to experience, hell of a thing to have to see, to be reminded you’re a human being and all it meant to be one.

More likely, they would just cease to exist.””That’s death.””No, it’s different. Death leaves a corps.

Once, there were no predators, no prey. Only harmony. There were no quakes, no storms, everything in balance. In the beginning, time was all at once and forever — no past, present, and future, no...

In memory, she lived and moved and laughed, but all that a photograph could offer was one frozen moment of a life.

Quick now, here, now, always, as if we are in a condition of complete simplicity…

No one can grant you happiness. Happiness is a choice we all have the power to make.

The secret is not to think, we think in words. And what lies beyond the reality we see is a truth that words can’t contain, the secret is to feel.

Her exceptional beauty also helps her to keep her secrets. Most people tend to think the best of those who are blessed with beauty; we have difficulty imagining that physical perfection can conceal twisted emotions...

We make so many of our own troubles, from mere mishaps to disasters, by dwelling on the possibility of them until the possible becomes inevitable.

Each book is a mind alive, a life revealed, a world awaiting exploration, but living people are all those things, as well—and more, because their stories haven’t yet been completely told.

When you laugh at yourself, you gain perspective. Then you realize that the mistakes you made, as long as they didn’t hurt anyone but yourself——well, you can forgive yourself for those.

These days, all I ask Fate is that the people she hurls into my life, whether they are evil or good, or morally bipolar, should be amusing to one degree or another.

…I stood there, inexpressibly grateful that my life, for all its terrors, is so filled with moments of grace.

Do as little harm to others as you can; make any sacrifice for your true friends; be responsible for yourself and ask nothing of others; and grab all the fun you can. Don’t give much...

Dogs, lives are short, too short, but you know that going in. You know the pain is coming, you’re going to lose a dog, and there’s going to be great anguish, so you live fully...

…an age-old patter that seemed like chaos but was not…

You can con God and get away with it, Granny said, if you do so with charm and wit. If you live your life with imagination and verve, God will play along just to see...

Remember, there are cookies waiting here for you.

In his mind he saw them standing with the tips of their organs pressed together ejaculating into each other’s penis.

To get through life successfully, body and soul must translate each other correctly more often than not.

Most people desperately desire to believe that they are a part of a great mystery, that Creation is a work of grace and glory, not merely the result of random forces colliding. Yet each time...

…because wonder admits to the existence of mystery, and the recognition of mystery in the world allows the possibility of Truth.

I can explain why I have to do what I’m about to do, but I’m acutely aware that an explanation is not a righteous justification. What’s bad is bad even if necessary.

Even as a child, she had preferred night to day, had enjoyed sitting out in the yard after sunset, under the star-speckled sky listening to frogs and crickets. Darkness soothed. It softened the sharp edges...

Nothing is worse than being alone on the evening of the day when one’s cow has exploded.

The only thing I know for sure is how much I do not know.

The more you expect from life, the more your expectations will be fulfilled. By laughing, you do not use up your laughter, but increase your store of it. The more you love, the more you...

No matter how close we are to another person, few human relationships are as free from strife, disagreement, and frustration as is the relationship you have with a good dog. Few human beings give of...

Hope, love, and faith are in the waiting

She was fascinated with words. To her, words were things of beauty, each like a magical powder or potion that could be combined with other words to create powerful spells.

In even a clear heart, some righteous acts of the harder kind can stir up a sediment of guilt, but that is not a bad thing. If allowed to be, the heart is self-policing, and...

…it will be a world made not bright but brighter, not clean but cleaner.

Humanity is a parade of fools, and I am at the front of it, twirling a baton.

Virtue is imaginative. Evil, repetitive.

But with the morning almost gone, with seven bodachs in the recreation room, with living boneyards stalking the storm, with Death opening the door to a luge chute and inviting me to go for a...

Every journey has a destination, known or unknown.

I am learning my way toward something that will make sense of my life, and I learn by going where I have to go, with whatever companions I am graced.

I stopped in St. Bernadette’s Cemetery one of my favorite places… The trunks of six giant oaks rise like columns supporting a ceiling formed by their interlocking crowns. In the quiet space below, is laid...

You do what you have to do. That’s who you seem to be to me, anyway. You’re one who does what he has to do.

For the likes of you, the path to happiness is one mean son of a bitch of a path.

She has suffered so much, and that sorrows me. But she has been strong in the face of unthinkable adversity, and that inspires me.