Joel

“Without rich people who want it done now, who would animate the free world? In theory, you want everyone to live peacefully according to their needs, along the banks of a river. In fact, you worry that you'd die of boredom there. In fact, you get a buzz from someone like Carole Potter, who keeps prize chickens and could teach a graduate course in landscaping; who maintains a staff of four (more in the summers, during High Guest Season); a handsome, slightly ridiculous husband; a beautiful daughter at Harvard and an incorrigible son doing something or other on Bondi Beach; Carole who is charming and self-deprecating and capable, if pushed, of a hostile indifference crueler than any form of rage; who reads novels and goes to movies and theater and yes, yes, bless her, buys art, serious art, about which she actually fucking knows a thing or two.”
― Michael Cunningham, By Nightfall

“What sucks the worst is . . . this world was a gift to us, and we broke it, and part of the deal is that if we want things right, we have to fix it ourselves. But we can't. We try, but we can't.”
― Dean Koontz, Forever Odd

“Remarkably, the most common regret of the dying was this: they wish they’d had the courage to live a life true to themselves and not the life others expected of them.”
― Donald Miller, Scary Close: Dropping the Act and Acquiring a Taste for True Intimacy

“Faith is simply whatever is real to us.”
― Elizabeth Kostova, The Swan Thieves