“Was it the forgetfulness of old age or personal incapacity that made the man able to say please but not thank you?”

I know zoos are no longer in people’s good graces. Religion faces the same problem. Certain illusions about freedom plague them both.

To lose your father is to lose the one whose guidance and help you seek, who supports you like a tree trunk supports its branches. To lose your mother, well, that is like losing the sun above you. It is like losing–I’m sorry, I would rather not go on.

Their faces go red, their chests heave mightily, they sputter angry words. The degree of their indignation is astonishing. Their resolve is frightening.

I can’t live for more than four years outside of Canada. I’m Canadian, so ultimately that is my reference point.

I felt I was beating a rainbow to death

I am not a particularly natural writer. I am not a person who can write in paragraphs the way some writers do. For me, it’s sentence by sentence, sometimes word-by-word. And I revise constantly. It’s a very laborious process, but I love doing it.

You may not believe in life, but I don’t believe in death. Move on!

I would like to add a third, to wit, the rapid and direct approch of a known killer

Misery loves company, and madness calls it forth.

At moments of wonder, it is easy to avoid small thinking, to entertain thoughts that span the universe, that capture both thunder and tinkle, thick and thin, the near and the far.

I am reminded of a story of Lord Krishna when he was a cowherd. Every night he invites the milkmaids to dance with him in the forest. They come and they dance. The night is dark, the fire in their midst roars and crackles, the beat of the music gets ever faster.

Faith in God is an opening up, a letting go, a deep trust, a free act of love – but sometimes it was so hard to love.

I chose the name Pi because it’s an irrational number (one with no discernable pattern). Yet scientists use this irrational number to come to a “rational” understanding of the universe. To me, religion is a bit like that, “irrational” yet with it we come together we come to a sound understanding of the universe.

I go to mass every Sunday, but love going to mosques too. Muslims pray in a beautiful way.

He’s a shy man. Life has taught him not to show off what is most precious to him.

To lose a brother is to lose someone with whom you can share the experience of growing old, who is supposed to bring you a sister-in-law and nieces and nephews, creatures who people the tree of your life and give it new branches.

I am not enough of a mathematician to be able to judge either the well-foundedness or the limits of relativity in physics.

Man is unable to see himself entirely unrelated to mankind, neither is he able to see mankind unrelated to life, nor life unrelated to the universe.

I think The Grateful Dead kind of represents the spirit of being able to go out and have an adventure in America at large.

We are not going to be able to operate our Spaceship Earth successfully nor for much longer unless we see it as a whole spaceship and our fate as common. It has to be everybody or nobody.

Anyone can have a good day, but you have to be able to perform on a bad day.

It’s the Tiger Woods effect. What he was able to accomplish at such a young age – he drew me to the game, and I can only speak for myself, but a lot of the players that are my age saw Tiger in his prime when we were all teenagers.

The thing I would like to be able to do is to make the music sound right no matter what it is. If somebody else wants to have a label for it, then that’s their business.

We would all like to be able to live an uncluttered life, a simple life, a good life.