"In eighty-six years, child, I've learned the world is a far more mysterious place than most people realize and that every moment of life is woven through with meaning."

"From the Buddhist point of view, it is true that emptiness is a characteristic of all of life - if we look carefully at any experience we will find transparency, insubstantiality, with no solid, unchanging core to our experience. But that does not mean that nothing matters."

"Perhaps defining a self begins with simply making the first choice, simply rising up and deciding what you desire, and then methodically, like writing, putting one word after the other until you have created a whole self and a whole life in the process."

"I love New York. You can pop out of the Underworld in Central Park, hail a taxi, head down Fifth Avenue with a giant hellhound loping along behind you, and nobody even looks at you funny.Of course, the Mist helped. People probably couldn't see Mrs. O'Leary, or maybe they thought she was a large,loud,very friendly truck."

"I want to board a train, and leave my books behind. I want to be so caught up in writing about the journey, that I forget that fiction & fact are not the same. The destination does not signify."

"The past is our definition. We may strive with good reason to escape it or to escape what is bad in it but we will escape it only by adding something better to it."

"Did you once have a grand plan which has become obsolete and no longer serves you? If there are areas in your life which must change to help you create better results, a redesign may be in order. Consider going back to the ‘drawing board’ to deconstruct what isn’t working and start anew."