Along with voting, jury duty, and paying taxes, goofing off is one of the central obligations of American citizenship.

Like Lincoln, I would like to believe the ballot is stronger than the bullet. Then again, he said that before he got shot.

Being a nerd, which is to say going too far and caring too much about a subject, is the best way to make friends I know.

The modern mocha is a bittersweet concoction of imperialism, genocide, invention, and consumerism served with whipped cream on top

My lips are chapped from the winds of change.

While I gave up God a long time ago, I never shook the habit of wanting to believe in something. So I replaced my creed of everlasting life with life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.

The whole point of Louis Armstrong is that no one can really figure him out. There was a while where I thought you could try.

History is one war after another with a bunch of murders and natural disasters in between.

What are you hiding? No one ever asks that.

I no longer drink nearly as much as I used to but, still, my motto is Sine coffea nihil sum. Without coffee, I'm nothing.

You know, it's always good to have a synonym just for variety.

The library had become her solace. Her refuge.Books did not question or judge. They made safe companions.

I didn't want to remember...yet in remembering, it dawned on me - finally - just how far down God had reached to free me.

I have no fear of being less beautiful, I've always been afraid of not being beautiful.

For the learning of every virtue there is an appropriate discipline, and for the learning of suspended judgment the best discipline is philosophy.

I make small mistakes every day. But major mistakes? It doesn't seem so. I've examined my service to the Tibetan people and to humanity, and I've done as much as I can in my life.

I could not ask forgiveness for something I had not done. As scapegoat, I could only bear the fault.

They're my favorite two words these days: Oscar reject.

That makes climate change a bigger public health problem than AIDS, than malaria, than pandemic flu.

I can ski out of my back door.

The illiterate of the future will not be the man who cannot read the alphabet, but the one who cannot take a photograph.