“Unconditional love is an illogical notion, but such a great and powerful one.”

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

I’m addicted to self-improvement. The thing is, there’s so damn much about myself to improve.

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.

I thought religion would make me live with my head in the clouds, but as often as not, it grounds me in this world.

The best we can do, to paraphrase Pollan, is to eat whole foods, mostly plants, and not too much.

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.

A 2002 Oxford study showed counting sheep actually delays the onset of sleep. It’s just too dull to stop us from worrying about jobs and spouses.

How do you gag the voice in your head that says, ‘You don’t have to [do it] today. There’s always tomorrow.’?

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.

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

Scrabble – The game is available in Braille. That’s a nice fact. This makes me feel better about humanity for some reason. I can’t really explain why.

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

Very few people changed the world by sitting on their couch.

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?

I know that knowledge and intelligence are not the same thing – but they do live in the same neighborhood. I know once again, firsthand, the joy of learning.

Giulia Melucci has written a wonderfully funny and moving book. It’s like Eat, Pray, Love, with recipes.

The illusion of luck disappears when we start seeing things as they actually are.

And in between a guilty laughter that pretended to move on, her eyes shed tears of reality and broke all her delusions.

We’re born alone, we live alone, we die alone. Only through our love and friendship can we create the illusion for the moment that we’re not alone.

The illusion that you could hold to yourself the things you most want and lose the things you least wanted to keep is the struggle of life.

Do not be misled by what you see around you, or be influenced by what you see. You live in a world which is a playground of illusion, full of false paths, false values and false ideals. But you are not part of that world.

I’ve spent a lot of time holding onto things and people that brought me misery because I was afraid of the void that may be there once I let go. I know now my voids were just as illusionary as the fear and insecurities that created them.

A house must be built on solid foundations if it is to last. The same principle applies to man, otherwise he too will sink back into the soft ground and becomes swallowed up by the world of illusion.

You know how in football, guys throw defenses, and the defense throws you a look, but the look is not really what it is – it’s only made to fool you. It’s the same thing with drugs. The drug is only an illusion to draw you in.