“Med students panic their first year when they learn all the diseases. It’s not until the second year that they learn the cures.”

Scrabble – The game is available in Braille. That’s a nice fact. This makes me feel better about humanity for some reason. I can’t really explain why.

I thought religion would eventually wither away and we’d all be worshiping at the altar of science.

Very few people changed the world by sitting on their couch.

It comes back to the old question: How can the Bible be so wise in some places and so barbaric in others? And why should we put any faith in a book that includes such brutality?

I know that knowledge and intelligence are not the same thing – but they do live in the same neighborhood. I know once again, firsthand, the joy of learning.

Giulia Melucci has written a wonderfully funny and moving book. It’s like Eat, Pray, Love, with recipes.

I have little shame, no dignity – all in the name of a better cause.

I don’t believe that prayers actually change God’s mind – if there is a God – but I liked praying for people in need. It was like moral weightlifting. I tend to be self-obsessed, and it was nice to get out of my brain once in a while.

Behavior shapes emotions.

Taking the Bible too literally is a mistake. It should be read as a guidebook of wisdom and insight.

I was what they call ‘skinny fat’ – a body that resembled a python after swallowing a goat.

I grew up in a very secular home with no religion at all, so I was starting from zero.

I prefer the earlier birth control techniques, which ranged from the delicious (using honey as a spermicide) to the aerobic (jumping backward seven times after coitus).

I am officially Jewish, but I’m Jewish in the same way the Olive Garden is an Italian restaurant.

I’ve never before been so aware of the thousands of little good things, the thousands of things that go right every day.

I love to live things, so I wanted to immerse myself and get into the mindset – and sandals – of my forefathers.

I’m sure they learn a lot, and some of them, it makes them aware of what they wish to do. I was – that’s the way I was – autodidact.

As you gently relax into awareness, into listening, the mind’s compulsive contraction around objects will fade. Awareness naturally returns to its non-state of absolute unmanifest potential, the silent abyss beyond all knowing.

When you begin to become conscious, more aware, when your eyes begin to open, the first thing you see is how deluded you are and how much you’re holding onto that which makes you suffer. This is, in many ways, the most important step: Are you willing to be aware?

I hope I have made it clear that the work is about perfection as we are aware of it in our minds but that the paintings are very far from being perfect – completely removed in fact – even as we ourselves are.

Out of all those millions and millions of planets floating around there in space, this is our planet, this is our little one, so we just got to be aware of it and take care of it.

Just as traffic symbols, when driving, make us almost unconsciously aware of a steep hill, an intersection, an icy bridge etc.

Most people have no idea what Cabo Verde is or even where it is to mention, so I definitely want to make people aware of this beautiful culture.

We’re living in a certain time, and we’re aware of it. And that’s part of what we’re aware of, along with our own personal aches and pains.