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How many psychiatrists does it take to screw in a lightbulb?_ __ don__ know. How many?_ __ight._ __hy?_ __h, stop overanalyzing it.

Isaac Asimov's remark about the infantilism of pseudoscience is just as applicable to religion: 'Inspect every piece of pseudoscience and you will find a security blanket, a thumb to suck, a skirt to hold.' It is astonishing, moreover, how many people are unable to understand that 'X is comforting' does not imply 'X is true'.

happened as I listened: I felt pain. Not in my head, not in my arm, not in my leg; everywhere at once. I told myself there was no difference between being __nside_ and being __utside,_ that it all came down to X__ and O__ that could be acquired in any number of different ways, but the pain increased to a point where I thought I might collapse, and I limped away.

Like all failed experiments, that one taught me something I didn__ expect: one key ingredient of so-called experience is the delusional faith that it is unique and special, that those included in it are privileged and those excluded from it are missing out. And I, like a scientist unwittingly inhaling toxic fumes from the beaker I was boiling in my lab, had, through sheer physical proximity, been infected by that same delusion and in my drugged state had come to believe I was Excluded: condemned to stand shivering outside the public library at Fifth Avenue and Forty-second Street forever and...

Confession is the act of inviting God to walk the acreage of our hearts. __here is a rock of greed over here, Father. I can__ budge it. And that tree of guilt near the fence? Its roots are long and deep. And may I show you some dry soil, too crusty for seed?_ God__ seed grows better if the soil of the heart is cleared.

All that glitters is not hovery.

Gage opens the door. I__ not sure whether he gets out or Logan yanks him into the street, but a fight erupts. Full throttle kicks to the balls

The beauty of the human soul Is not the pretty face. It__ found within the heart and hands Of those who look _ and stay.

Left alone, human beings are a plague. They multiply relentlessly, consuming every resource, destroying everything they touch.

Isn__ it amazing how much good people can do for each other when you give them the opportunity to help?

In the end, it doesn__ matter how well we have performed or what we have accomplished__ life without heart is not worth living.

It is how we respond to loss that matters. That response will largely determine the quality, the direction, and the impact of our lives.

(My proudest moment as a child was the time I beat my uncle Pierre at Scrabble with the seven-letter word FARTING.)

You come before the judgment seat of God full of rebellion and mistakes. Because of his justice he cannot dismiss your sin, but because of his love he cannot dismiss you. So, in an act which stunned the heavens, he punished himself on the cross for your sins. God__ justice and love are equally honored. And you, God__ creation, are forgiven.

But bringing people together is what music has always done best.

I noticed the plants growing around me. Tall with leaves like arrowheads. Blossoms with three white petals. I knelt down in the water, my fingers digging into the soft mud, and I pulled up handfuls of the roots. Small, bluish tubers that don__ look like much but boiled or baked are as good as any potato. __atniss,_ I said aloud. It__ the plant I was named for. And I heard my father__ voice joking, __s long as you can find yourself, you__l never starve.

It was the laughter of birthdays, of money found in an old pocket.

We__e miserable because we think that we are mere individuals, alone with our fears and flaws and resentments and mortality. We wrongly believe that our limited little egos constitute our whole entire nature. We have failed to recognize our deeper divine character.