“If you live only for yourself, dying is an especially scary proposition.”

“Anger, and the self-righteousness that is both the cause and consequence of anger, tends to be easier on the psyche than personal responsibility.”

“The National Surveillance State doesn't want anyone to be able to communicate without the authorities being able to monitor that communication.”

“Stephen King has inspired me with his humor and honesty, and his admonition that the author's job is to tell the truth.”

“You see, cancer is simply nature's way of making you want to die.'Tatsu.”

“Sometimes I think the urge to believe in our own worldview is our most powerful intellectual imperative, the mind's equivalent of feeding, fighting, and fornicating. People will eagerly twist facts into wholly unrecognizable shapes to fit them into existing suppositions. They'll ignore the obvious, select the irrelevant, and spin it all into a tapestry of self-deception, solely to justify an idea, no matter how impoverished or self-destructive.”

“It's a strange thing, having a child," he said. It completely alters your most fundamental priorities. When my eldest daughter was born, I realized that I would do anything - anything - to protect her. If I had to set myself on fire to save her from something, I would do it with the utmost relief and gratitude. It's quite a thing, quite a privilege, to care about someone so much that the measure of worth of your own life is changed so much."Tatsu.”

“If you live only for yourself, dying is an especially scary proposition.”

“Most people are like sheep. Nice, harmless creatures who want nothing more than to be left alone so they can graze. But then of course there are wolves. Who want nothing more than to eat the sheep.But there’s a third kind of person. The sheepdog. Sheepdogs have fangs like wolves. But their instinct isn’t predation. It’s protection. All they want, what they live for, is to protect the flock.”