“You try your damnedest, but something always goes wrong. That’s life. If you’re smart, you plan for it.”

“You’re not immortal, you’re not eternal and to believe otherwise is to diminish everything that you really have. Life is precious because it is short and there is nothing after it. There is no purpose and there is no destiny beyond anything you give it yourself. If you want your life to mean something try making someone else’s life meaningful.”

“Advice to students: Leap in and try things. If you succeed, you can have enormous influence. If you fail, you have still learned something, and your next attempt is sure to be better for it. Advice to graduates: Do something you really enjoy doing. If it isn’t fun to get up in the morning and do your job or your school program, you’re in the wrong field.”

“A young man’s ambition — to get along in the world and make a place for himself — half your life goes that way, till you’re 45 or 50. Then, if you’re lucky, you make terms with life, you get released.”

“If you don’t have a dog--at least one--there is not necessarily anything wrong with you, but there may be something wrong with your life.”

“If you don't own a dog, at least one, there is not necessarily anything wrong with you, but there may be something wrong with your life.”

“The Auditors fluttered anxiously. And, as always happens in their species when something goes radically wrong and needs fixing instantly, they settled down to try to work how who was to blame.”

“What’s the difference between spending your life trying to be invisible, or pretending to be the person you think everyone wants you to be? Either way, you’re faking.”

“You’re not a human being until you value something more than the life of your body. And the greater the thing you live and die for the greater you are.”

“You can’t have a plan for your day, ‘til you have a plan for your life.”