“Behavior shapes emotions.”

The Bible talks a lot about thankfulness, and I’m more thankful than I ever was. I try to concentrate on the hundreds of things that go right in a day, instead of the three or four that go wrong.

I’d recommend learning to accept rejection. Become friends with rejection. Be nice to rejection, because it’s a huge part of being a writer, no matter where you are in your career.

I found there were things about religion that I really loved; things like the sense of gratefulness that it brings.

It’s hard to be in a bad mood when you’re walking around looking like you’re about to play the semifinals at Wimbledon.

Paintings! They’re like TV, but they don’t move.

In trying to avoid one sin I’ve committed another.

The key to making healthy decisions is to respect your future self. Honor him or her. Treat him or her like you would treat a friend or a loved one.

After a while, if you’re committed, you start to believe in the things in which you’re praying. It’s just cognitive dissonance. You can’t live a completely religious life and not start to have it sink in.

When I went to Israel, it was a little disorienting, because there are so many people who look crazy and were dressed like me. There, I was just one of the apocalyptic crowd.

When I was with the serpent-handlers in Tennessee, it was the most bizarre method of worship I could think of. Yet when you sit with these people, you can kind of see how it makes sense.

More people die on a per mile basis from drunk walking than from drunk driving.

I find placebos uplifting and exhilarating. It means that taking action–no matter what the action is–might help you feel better.

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

Its sort of my job to feel good.

I was very good at sitting. But I just read so much research about how horrible sitting is for you. It’s like, it’s really bad. It’s like Paula-Deen-glazed-bacon-doughnut bad. So I now move around as much as possible.

Probably 90 percent of our life decisions are powered by the twin engines of inertia and laziness.

Human behavior is timeless.

How do you change your behavior? Change what you worship

Live so that you can at least get the benefit of the doubt.

The alcoholic and the drug addict harm only themselves by their behavior; the person who violates the rules of morality governing mans life in society harms not only himself, but everyone.

Suffering is nature’s way of indicating a mistaken attitude or way of behavior, and to the nonegocentric person every moment of suffering is the opportunity for growth. People should rejoice in suffering, strange as it sounds, for this is a sign of the availability of energy to transform their characters.

The day is not far off when the economic problem will take the back seat where it belongs, and the arena of the heart and the head will be occupied or reoccupied, by our real problems – the problems of life and of human relations, of creation and behavior and religion.

It is an open question whether any behavior based on fear of eternal punishment can be regarded as ethical or should be regarded as merely cowardly.

Our humanity rests upon a series of learned behaviors, woven together into patterns that are infinitely fragile and never directly inherited.