A white person was by definition somebody. Other people needed, across their hearts, one steel rib.

Anything is possible. A man is what he makes up his mind to be.

Whatever I do in life, I'm almost always aware that there's another way to do it.

I like to listen. I'm much more interested in listening than in speaking, for sure.

When I think about why I would be a writer, why I should continue to be a writer, it seems to me one of the few things you can dowhere you're never bored.

... there is ... a big aspect of play in writing novels, and making the story more and more elaborate is just more and more fun.

I think that there is a bias in the current literary climate, which is not only very Western but very male.

A man was the sum of his limits; freedom only made him see how much so.

It's human to hear stories and to know how people live and to imagine how that is for them. It's very interdependent!

I hate to generalize because there are always so many exceptions to any rule.

Chinese language tends to be quick, economical. To know what people are saying, you always need to know what the context is.

Many people find bald, unvarnished truths so disturbing, they prefer to ram their heads in the sand and start dreaming at the first sign of scientific reality.

Mindfulness promises a great number of desirable benefits, and is based on much more solid research than many competing ideas on how to change people.

Do we choose sleep? Hell no and bullshit - we fall. We give ourselves over to possibility, to whim and fancy, to the bed, to the pillow, the tiny white tablet. And these choose for us.

I am by heritage a Jew, by citizenship a Swiss, and by makeup a human being, and only a human being, without any special attachment to any state or national entity whatsoever.

The most meaningless term in the English language is "I take full responsibility." When a politician utters those words it means absolutely nothing.

When we surrender to His timing, He does mighty things in and for us, according to His will and His timing. God acts on behalf of those who wait for Him.

The Revolution's most important result was Napoleon, whose most important result (as France learned in 1871, and again in 1914, and again in 1940) was the invention of Germany

Some think the worst horrors of war might be avoided by an international agreement not to use atomic bombs. This is a vain hope.

But the freedom that they fought for, and the country grand they wrought for, Is their monument to-day, and for aye.

Mike Smith - living proof of the need for ejector seats in helicopters.