“Christians like to dream of the perfect world, a place where there is no fighting, where sword-blades are hammered into plowshares, and where the lion, whatever that is, sleeps with the lamb. It is a dream. There has always been war and there will always be war. So long as one man wants another man’s wife, or another man’s land, or another man’s cattle, or another man’s silver, so long will there be war. And so long as one priest preaches that his god is the only god or the better god there will be war.”

“Some silences are more meaningful than thousands of long sentences.”

“When you stay in your comfort zone, you are not learning.”

“Here's a comforting thought for you, Peter,' he said. 'However long you may live, the world will never lose its ability to surprise you with its beauty.”

“war was nothing more than an argument in which no one had landed on a better solution than killing each other.”

“I came to think that maybe God was what you believed in because you needed to feel you weren’t alone. Maybe God was simply that part of yourself that was always there and always strong, even when you were not.”

“It was better, he thought, to fail in attempting exquisite things than to succeed in the department of the utterly contemptible.”

“This is the thing about great literature. It reads like truth and sticks to you forever and lets you know that you are not alone.”