"Three causes especially have excited the discontent of mankind; and, by impelling us to seek remedies for the irremediable, have bewildered us in a maze of madness and error. These are death, toil, and the ignorance of the future.."

"It's a strange poverty of the English language, and indeed, of many other languages, that we use this same word, 'depression' to describe how a kid feels when it rains on his birthday, and to describe how somebody feels the minute before they commit suicide."

"We want life to make sense. If we don’t find meaning and orientation, we are bound to fabulate a living and invent an inspiring life story. When we write out a chosen script, we’ll have to make time to hunker down into attuning it to the hitches of the road map, time and again, with fractious patience. ( 'Everybody his story' )."

"In the end, age in numbers is no more than an empty bag. The only way to truly tell a person's years is by examing the contents they have filled it with."

"Before she can stop herself, she thinks about desire, how it lives within you and yet is separate, surfacing when it chooses, without permission, in the harsh afternoon light, at the moment when you least expect to find it."

"Zoe stopped one last time in front of the mirror, adjusting her new American dress. She didn’t see the dress, however. She saw what the big Russian did to her. She saw what al-Qaeda did to her. She saw a person shunned by her Persian village. She saw ugliness. Every time she looked in the mirror she saw deficiency."

"No pleasure philosophy no sensuality no place nor power no material success can for a moment give such inner satisfaction as the sense of living for good purpose."