"Being born in New York City, tends to lead to big expectations, expectations that I only started to realize after I had left."

“I don't know what God is, or what God had in mind when the universe was set in motion. In fact, I don't know if God even exists, although I confess that I sometimes find myself praying in times of great fear, or despair, or astonishment at a display of unexpected beauty.”

Source : Jon Krakauer (2013). “Under The Banner of Heaven: A Story of Violent Faith”, p.304, Pan Macmillan

“Here's why I don't have time to 'play church': at the end of the day, when I was supposed to be discarded, and the tools came in to kill me, to crush my head or whatever you're supposed to do, the Lord took His hand, pushed in there, and pushed me back out of the way. And they thought they got me. But at the end of the day God had a plan for a broken situation.”

“An age which is incapable of poetry is incapable of any kind of literature except the cleverness of a decadence.”

“Really, being a librarian is a much more dangerous job than you realize.”

“What if someone comes?" I half-heartedly protest. "No one's coming here but you.”

“If your employer pays your health insurance, that's not counted as income to you. And any economist would say that's your income, because they'd pay a higher wage if they didn't take it. That's a huge loss to the Treasury.”

“Can anyone be arrogant when he stands beside the cross?”

“That which is repeated too often becomes insipid and tedious.”

Source : "The Art of Poetry (Canto I)". Book by Nicolas Boileau-Despreaux, 1674.