“The Book of Telling tells of a woman’s journey to uncover the secret life of her father and to find herself in the process.”

Or perhaps it is not because the cosmos is irrational but because they are rational. Who can say which, in an acausal world?

A person who cannot imagine the future is a person who cannot contemplate the results of his actions. Some are thus paralyzed into inaction.

Human beings consider themselves satisfied only compared to some other condition.

A writer is someone who has a one-man tent in the desert and occasionally he sees the footprint of an other writer – in the form of a review or something.

I picked such seemingly disparate essays, I thought it was important to say what was the guiding principle in the selection rather than focus on any one essay.

Some say it is best not to go near the center of time.

That someone else was speaking the words to me and I was just writing them down. It was a very strange experience. That can happen with a short book. I don’t think it could happen with a long book.

A world in which time is absolute is a world of consolation. For while the movements of people are unpredictable, the movement of time is predictable.

Although technology is proceeding at a dizzying pace, I believe that the human mind will always have control of itself.

I think it is always a long shot getting a book made into a film.

It’s the Platonic philosophy in The Republic that philosophers should lead the country.

As human beings, don’t we need questions without answers as well as questions with answers, questions that we might someday answer and questions that we can never answer?

Where are the one billion people who lived and breathed in the year 1800, only two short centuries ago?

The mother and father osprey stay together. It’s a monogamous relationship. And every summer they raise a new brood of children.

As long as God does not intervene in the contemporary universe in such a way as to violate physical laws, science has no way of knowing whether God exists or not.

The tragedy of this world is that everyone is alone. For a life in the past cannot be shared with the present.

You’re in a conversation and everybody’s agreeing with what you’re saying – even if you say something totally crazy. You need people who can tell you what you don’t want to hear.

Romantic love can be a lot of crap, though, let me tell you. And it can hurt you.

Did you know I started out as a stand-up comic? People don’t believe me when I tell them. That’s how I saw myself, in comedy.

I tell the players that they can’t relive any day in their lives and that they can’t relive the minutes of a game.

Every day I tell myself how fortunate I am to be where I am.

When you have that light in your eye, that you feel so good, and you’re a pleasant person to be around. “Good morning, sir. Did you find everything that you need?

Sometimes if I tell people, ‘I’m afraid that I’m really a fraud,’ or ‘I have a lot of self-doubt,’ they go.

Let that get you up in the morning and put the light in your eyes. I’m telling you, it makes you a better husband, mother, father, neighbor, citizen.