“My greatest wish – other than salvation – was to have a book.”

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.

Religion is just an alternate way of reading reality – you read material reality, and then you add on an extra layer of religiosity that deepens that understanding of reality. Some countries have lost that capacity, or dismissed it or marginalized it.

The worst pair of opposites is boredom and terror. Sometimes your life is a pendulum swing from one to the other.

I have read that there are two fears that cannot be trained out of us: the startle reaction upon hearing an unexpected noise, and vertigo.

We commonly say in the trade that the most dangerous animal in a zoo is Man.

When you’ve suffered a great deal in life, each additional pain is both unbearable and trifling.

I was giving up. I would have given up – if a voice hadn’t made itself heard in my heart. The voice said “I will not die. I refuse it. I will make it through this nightmare.

Life will defend itself no matter how small it is.

Life on a lifeboat isn’t much of a life. It is like an end game in chess, a game with few pieces. The elements couldn’t be more simple, nor the stakes higher.

Artists invent things as a way of telling the truth.

At every crisis in one’s life, it is absolute salvation to have some sympathetic friend to whom you can think aloud without restraint or misgiving.

Why do men fight for their servitude as stubbornly as though it were their salvation?

We must pray without tiring, for the salvation of mankind does not depend upon material success . . . but on Jesus alone.

Joseph Smith, the Prophet and Seer of the Lord, has done more, save Jesus only, for the salvation of men in this world, than any other man that ever lived in it.

The media is either our salvation or our death.

Man’s salvation and perfection consists of doing the will of God which he must have in view in all things, and at every moment of his life.

Three things are necessary for the salvation of man: to know what he ought to believe; to know what he ought to desire; and to know what he ought to do.

The salvation of man is through love and in love.