American politics can produce great men and women, but it is profoundly insular.

Ideology knows the answer before the question has been asked. Principles are something different: a set of values that have to be adapted to circumstances but not compromised away.

Inequality hardens society into a class system. Inequality divides us from one another... Inequality undermines democracy.

At the heart of the matter is a battle between wish and fear. Fear generally proves stronger than a wish, but it leaves a taste of disappointment on the tongue.

I think that bias is not a fixed thing. It's not as though some people are biased and others are not. It ebbs and flows. It can be manipulated. It changes according to a person's circumstances.

We will have a more just society as soon as we want one.

We have all the information in the universe at our fingertips, while our most basic problems go unsolved year after year...All around, we see dazzling technological change, but no progress.

Inequality saps the will to conceive of ambitious solutions to large collective problems, because those problems no longer seem very collective.

We all know who Donald Trump's talking to.

Character is destiny, and politicians usually get the scandals they deserve, with a sense of inevitability about them.

Twitter is crack for media addicts.

Best of all are the decorations the grandchildren have made ~ fat little stars and rather crooked Santas, shaped out of dough and baked in the oven.

We all just realized that I am terminally ill and I'm dying and I would just prefer to die with less pain and less suffering.

You'd be surprised how little I knew even up to yesterday

Then no matter what goes on around you in the physical universe, hang on to what you know.

As an actor, I'll take any job.

Many a happiness in life, a many a disaster, is due to chance alone; but the peace within us can never be governed by chance.

I remind myself that the universe is 15 billion years old, and I'm only 46 years old, so my perspective is sort of limited and fear-based and skewed.

I'm a novelist at heart. How's that? And that's how I make my living, is I write novels.

Surprises are good. I'm not of the thinking where you tell the audience everything. Sometimes I don't even want to see the trailers. You see the trailer, you've seen the movie.

The Christian system of religion is an outrage on common sense.