I would like to have a dollar for every person in a courtship who knew he or she had felt the guidance of the Lord in that relationship, had prayed about the experience enough to know it was the will of the Lord, knew they loved each other and enjoyed each other’s company, and saw a lifetime of wonderful compatibility ahead—only to panic, to get a brain cramp, to have total catatonic fear sweep over them. They ‘draw back,’ as Paul said, if not into perdition at least into marital paralysis. I am not saying you shouldn’t be very careful about something as significant and serious as marriage…Yes, there are cautions and considerations to make, but once there has been genuine illumination, beware the temptation to retreat from a good thing. If it was right when you prayed about it and trusted it and lived for it, it is right now. Don’t give up when the pressure mounts.

[Donald] Keene observed [in a book entitled The Pleasures of Japanese Literature, 1988] that the Japanese sense of beauty has long sharply differed from its Western counterpart: it has been dominated by a love of irregularity rather than symmetry, the impermanent rather than the eternal and the simple rather than the ornate. The reason owes nothing to climate or genetics, added Keene, but is the result of the actions of writers, painters and theorists, who had actively shaped the sense of beauty of their nation.Contrary to the Romantic belief that we each settle naturally on a fitting idea of beauty, it seems that our visual and emotional faculties in fact need constant external guidance to help them decide what they should take note of and appreciate. 'Culture' is the word we have assigned to the force that assists us in identifying which of our many sensations we should focus on and apportion value to.

“As a result of increased sales, product mix and expense reductions, second quarter gross margins as a percentage of revenue improved to 39 percent from 35 percent in the second quarter of 2004 and from 32 percent in the first quarter of 2005. We expect gross margin as a percentage of revenue to approximate 40 percent in the second half of 2005. We improved on our second quarter guidance of a loss of $0.08 to $0.09 per share, due mainly to the deferral of previously planned UWB investments until later this year. In addition, we reached our near-term fund raising goal and added further liquidity by obtaining approximately $4.2 million in new equity and debt financing commitments on June 20. With continued focus on managing our balance sheet, including increasing inventory turns and reducing DSOs, we intend to reduce the company's financing requirements for the fourth quarter.”

Jesus Christ is the source—the only source—of meaning in life. He provides the only satisfactory explanation for why we’re here and where we’re going. Because of this good news, the final heartbeat for the Christian is not the mysterious conclusion to a meaningless existence. It is, rather, the grand beginning to a life that will never end. That same Lord is waiting to embrace and forgive anyone who comes to Him in humility and repentance. He is calling your name, just as He called the name of Pete Maravich. His promise of eternal life offers the only hope for humanity. If you have never met this Jesus, I suggest that you seek spiritual counsel from a Christian leader who can offer guidance. You can also write to me, if that would help. Thanks for reading along with me. I hope to meet you someday. If our paths don’t cross this side of heaven, I’ll be looking for you in that eternal city. By all means, Be there!

Since the moment when, at the sight of his beloved and dying brother, Levin for the first time looked at the questions of life and death in the light of the new convictions, as he called them, which between the ages of twenty and thirty-four had imperceptibly replaced the beliefs of his childhood and youth, he had been less horrified by death than by life without the least knowledge of whence it came, what it is for, why, and what it is, Organisms, their destruction, the indestructibility of matter, the law of the conservation of energy, development—the terms that had superseded these beliefs—were very useful for mental purposes; but they gave no guidance for life, and Levin suddenly felt like a person who has exchanged a thick fur coat for a muslin garment and who, being out in the frost for the first time, becomes clearly convinced, not by arguments, but with the whole of his being, that he is as good as naked and that he must inevitably perish miserably.

I decided (after listening to a "talk radio" commentator who abused, vilified, and scorned every noble cause to which I had devoted my entire life) that I was both a humanist and a liberal, each of the most dangerous and vilified type. I am a humanist because I think humanity can, with constant moral guidance, create a reasonably decent society. I am terrified of restrictive religious doctrine, having learned from history that when men who adhere to any form of it are in control, common men like me are in peril. I do not believe that pure reason can solve the perpetual problems unless it is modified by poetry and art and social vision. So I am a humanist. And if you want to charge me with being the most virulent kind—a secular humanist—I accept the accusation. [Interview, Parade magazine, 24 November 1991]

I talk about writing and write so much because aside from music, it’s the only thing giving me peace and reason and purpose. Everyone is looking for answers but I don’t have them and I’m not the answer, but I feel like if I could see the face of God, I’d be better, healed—absolved. I feel like a bastard and like I’m pushing a Ponzi scheme every time someone comes to me for guidance and I push them to the “right” path when I’m just as lost as they are. And it makes me feel like shit every time someone wants to look up to me, or when people call me strong or brave or amazing or want to tell me how “great” I am. And then, the next moment, I’m fine, until the next tide of emotion comes again. I’m just a person who’s had a lot of time to think—a flawed and fucked-up person.

[The long ride to Riyadh]When I first travelled, I was naive, sloppy, wide-eyed, and nothing happened to me. That’s probably where the dumb luck came in. Then I began to read the guidebooks, the State Department warnings, the endless elucidation of national norms, cultural cues and insults and regional dangers, and I became wary, careful, savvy. I kept my money taped inside my shoe, or strapped to my stomach. I took any kind of precaution, believing that the people of this area did this, and the people of that province did that. But then, finally, I realised no one of any region did anything I have ever expected them to do, much less anything the guidebooks said they would. Instead, they behaved as everyone behaves, which is to say they behave as individuals of damnably infinite possibility. Anyone could do anything, in theory, but most of the time everyone everywhere acts with plain bedrock decency, helping where help is needed, guiding where guidance is necessary. It’s almost weird.

From my insufficiency to my perfection, and from my deviation to my equilibriumFrom my sublimity to my beauty, and from my splendor to my majestyFrom my scattering to my gathering, and from my rejection to my communionFrom my baseness to my preciousness, and from my stones to my pearlsFrom my rising to my setting, and from my days to my nightsFrom my luminosity to my darkness, and from my guidance to my strayingFrom my perigee to my apogee, and from the base of my lance to its tipFrom my waxing to my waning, and from the void of my moon to its crescentFrom my pursuit to my flight, and from my steed to my gazelleFrom my breeze to my boughs, and from my boughs to my shadeFrom my shade to my delight, and from my delight to my tormentFrom my torment to my likeness, and from my likeness to my impossibilityFrom my impossibility to my validity, and from my validity to my deficiency.I am no one in existence but myself,

For the person who tortured me in jail. For the person who tortured the many of my followers and killed them in jail, and the many other greater leaders than me and their followers in jail, and for the men who jailed my supporters, I pray. I don’t hate them. I love them as much as I love my closest loved ones, and I pray for their guidance. My loves, you be this way too. It doesn’t help to hate. If you hate, you pollute your own soul … Words cannot express how much I wish the best for you. My foremost ambition for you is that you have hearts full of light, thoughtfulness of God, and goodness, so much so that the devil has no space to get into your hearts. I want you to be happy with yourselves, and for other people to be happy with you, when you leave this life … May you be so good that rain of mercy falls onto you. May this brother (Ahmad), that is so unworthy of your love, also be so lucky.