I’m not a fan of ‘write what you know.’ If you don’t know, find out. I knew nothing about the Bible before I started writing ‘The Year of Living Biblically.’ That was kind of the point – to learn.
A. J. JACOBSWhen 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.
More A. J. Jacobs Quotes
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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.
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I thought religion would eventually wither away and we’d all be worshiping at the altar of science.
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The best we can do, to paraphrase Pollan, is to eat whole foods, mostly plants, and not too much.
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My reading list grows exponentially. Every time I read a book, it’ll mention three other books I feel I have to read. It’s like a particularly relentless series of pop-up ads.
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Taking the Bible too literally is a mistake. It should be read as a guidebook of wisdom and insight.
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Med students panic their first year when they learn all the diseases. It’s not until the second year that they learn the cures.
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Since I was relatively new to the Bible, I was surprised by the Old Testament God. He’s wrathful, but at other times, He’s incredibly compassionate. He’s not a one-dimensional figure at all.
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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?
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Jealousy is a useless, time-wasting emotion that’s eating me alive.
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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.
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I thought religion would make me live with my head in the clouds, but as often as not, it grounds me in this world.
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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.
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There’s a beauty to forgiveness, especially forgiveness that goes beyond rationality. Unconditional love is an illogical notion, but such a great & powerful one
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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.
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Unconditional love is an illogical notion, but such a great and powerful one.
A. J. JACOBS






