I know we're not saints or virgins or lunatics; we know all the lust and lavatory jokes, and most of the dirty people; we can catch buses and count our change and cross the roads and talk real sentences. But our innocence goes awfully deep, and our discreditable secret is that we don't know anything at all, and our horrid inner secret is that we don't care that we don't.

We are not special. We are not crap or trash, either. We just are. We just are, and what happens just happens.

Whatever our history, whatever the root of our surnames, we remain a good and decent people, and we do not bow down and we do not give up. The fire of the human spirit cannot be quenched by bomb blasts or body counts. Cannot be intimidated forever into silence or drowned by tears. We have endured worse before. We will bear this burden and all that come hereafter because that's what ordinary men and women do. No matter what. This has not made us weaker. It has only made us stronger.

Fame is not the same as success, and in our true souls we know that.

We are not self-caused little gods.

We are wiser than we know.

We know that we are not dreaming, but, however unable we may be to prove it rationally, our inability proves nothing but the weakness of our reason, and not the uncertainty of all our knowledge as they maintain.

We need not take refuge in supernatural gods to explain our saints and sages and heroes and statesmen, as if to explain our disbelief that mere unaided human beings could be that good or wise.

Our discreditable secret is that we don't know anything at all, and our horrid inner secret is that we don't care that we don't.

We're just as screwed up and brave and false and loyal and wrong and right as anyone else.

We understand more than we know.

we may not exactly be God, but we’re not exactly nothing, either.

Perhaps there is more sense in our nonsense and more nonsense in our 'sense' than we would care to believe.

In most cases, people, even wicked people, are far more naive and simple-hearted than one generally assumes. And so are we.