“After decimating several vegetables, I decide juicing is my favorite form of food preparation. There’s something perversely appealing about subjecting an innocent plant to that much violence.”

Jealousy is a useless, time-wasting emotion that’s eating me alive.

It’s a different way of looking at the world. Your life isn’t about rights. It’s about responsibilities.”–Mr Bill Berkowitz

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’m so lucky to be in a position to help people, and that’s appealing to me.

You’re not going to be persistent and tenacious enough if you don’t love what you’re doing. If it’s not something that excites you, that appeals to you deep down inside.

Autumn wins you best by this its mute appeal to sympathy for its decay.

Lost rights are never regained by appeals to the conscience of the usurpers, but by relentless struggle.

An appeal to fear never finds an echo in German hearts.

Nobody in the world, nobody in history, has ever gotten their freedom by appealing to the moral sense of the people who were oppressing them.

Japan is the only country that can appeal to the world about the horror of the atomic bomb and the misery of the bombing.

You always have to appeal to your audience.