All gardening is landscape painting,' said Alexander Pope.

There is no one as dangerous as he or she who has nothing to lose.

Leave the door open for the unknown, the door into the dark. That’s where the most important things come from, where you yourself came from, and where you will go.

A book is a heart that only beats in the chest of another.

To be hopeful means to be uncertain about the future, to be tender toward possibilities, to be dedicated to change all the way down to the bottom of your heart.

Worry is a way to pretend that you have knowledge or control over what you don't--and it surprises me, even in myself, how much we prefer ugly scenarios to the pure unknown.

Joy doesn't betray but sustains activism. And when you face a politics that aspires to make you fearful, alienated and isolated, joy is a fine initial act of insurrection.

Politics is pervasive. Everything is political and the choice to be "apolitical" is usually just an endorsement of the status quo and the unexamined life.

Memory, even in the rest of us, is a shifting, fading, partial thing, a net that doesn't catch all the fish by any means and sometimes catches butterflies that don't exist.

Every minute of every hour of every day you are making the world, just as you are making yourself, and you might as well do it with generosity and kindness and style.

Revolution is as unpredictable as an earthquake and as beautiful as spring. Its coming is always a surprise, but its nature should not be.

Bad people often end up as heroes.

We are not victims of our genes, but masters of our fates, able to create lives overflowing with peace, happiness, and love.

If you want to challenge the system, don't go to bed with it.

How someone treats a waiter or doorman can tell you so much about a person.

When we believe ourselves in possession of the only truth, we are likely to be indifferent to common everyday truths.

There are a lot of grotesqueries in politics, not the least of which is the fund-raising side.

The principle we call self-love never seeks anything external for the sake of the thing, but only as a means of happiness or good: particular affections rest in the external things themselves.

Almost every person wonders who their soul mate will be or where they will find them and everyone has or will suffer a love loss or the fear of that loss at different points in their lives.

I sleep well. In my entire legal career, I have not lost much sleep at night worrying about things, because I've done what I could do in the time I had, and I've got some rest.

A lot of things inspire me - especially pain.