All politics takes place on a slippery slope. The most important four words in politics are up to a point.

Baseball, it is said, is only a game. True. And the Grand Canyon is only a hole in Arizona. Not all holes, or games, are created equal.

Some parents say it is toy guns that make boys warlike. But give a boy a rubber duck and he will seize its neck like the butt of a pistol and shout 'Bang!'

Americans are overreaching; overreaching is the most admirable and most American of the many American excesses.

The pursuit of perfection often impedes improvement.

Ronald Reagan has held the two most demeaning jobs in the country; President of the United States and radio broadcaster for the Chicago Cubs.

The unpleasant sound Bush is emitting as he traipses from one conservative gathering to another is a thin, tinny "arf" - the sound of a lap dog.

Sports is a moral undertaking because it requires of participants, and it schools spectators in the appreciation of, noble things - courage, grace under pressure, sportsmanship.

A politician's words reveal less about what he thinks about his subject than what he thinks about his audience.

A society that thinks the choice between ways of living is just a choice between equally eligible 'lifestyles' turns universities into academic cafeterias offering junk food for the mind.

Donald Trump is redundant evidence that if your net worth is high enough, your IQ can be very low and you can still intrude into American politics.

Resilience, thy name is Devine.

These people marched and were hit in the face with rocks to get an education and now we've got these knuckleheads walking round.

Working with Martin Scorsese was an absolute minute-by-minute education without him ever being grandiose about it.

adversity is so rough a teacher!

I don't take much from my own father, because he was a very austere, quiet, private man who would come home from work, go to his parlour and play Beethoven on his piano.

We don't have as many managers as we should, but we would rather have too few than too many.

In some extremely important ways, people are what you expect them to be, or at least they behave as you expect them to behave.

That nothing is static or fixed, that all is fleeting and impermanent, is the first mark of existence. Everything is in process.

Experientially there is only one religion, and it is shamanism and shamanic ecstasy.

Usually when you meet with a director, just meeting them after you've seen something you're interested in, they say, "Oh I'd love to work together," and sometimes you never hear from them again.