Be wary of great leaders.

I want to turn the clock back to when people lived in small villages and took care of each other.

Do you know the difference between education and experience? Education is when you read the fine print; experience is what you get when you don't.

Some of my ancestors were religious dissenters who came to America over three hundred years ago. Others were abolitionists in New England in the eighteen forties and fifties.

It's a very important thing to learn to talk to people you disagree with.

I tell kids, don't trust the media. The media with their emphasis on fame is helping to destroy this country, helping destroy the human race. It's the plug-in drug.

Shh. Listen to the sounds that surround you. Notice the pitches, the volume, the timbre, the many lines of counterpoint. As light taught Monet to paint, the earth may be teaching you music.

Songs are funny things. They can slip across borders. Proliferate in prisons. Penetrate hard shells. I always believed that the right song at the right moment could change history.

This world is so full of hypocrisy, the only way you can be honest is to be a hermit.

Long live teachers of children, because they can show children how they can save the world.

If it can’t be reduced, reused, repaired, rebuilt, refurbished, refinished, resold, recycled or composted, then it should be restricted, redesigned or removed from production.

When I see an arrogant man, I see one less competitor.

I want to know exactly how many pieces of myself I had to give away before I became something else entirely.

A lot of times I can across as too masculine to men, and they couldn't handle me, they stayed away.

Here [in Wonder Boys] I had this group of characters where you didn't know which were the important ones or what direction they were heading.

Turning fifty ... is like flying: hours of boredom punctuated by moments of sheer terror.

A film is a boat which is always on the point of sinking-it always tends to break up as you go along and drag you under with it.

Bilbo saw that the moment had come when he must do something.

You do it a day at a time. You write as well as you can, you put it in the mail, you leave it under submission, you never leave it at home.

Life sometimes gets in the way of writing.

I realize that many elements of the Buddhist teaching can be found in Christianity, Judaism, Islam. I think if Buddhism can help, it is the concrete methods of practice.