Being clever was when you looked at how things were and used the evidence to work out something new.

I was born too late for steam trains and a lazy eye meant I'd never be an astronaut.

It wasn't about believing this or that, it wasn't even about good and evil and right and wrong, it was about finding the strength to bear the discomfort that came with being in the world.

And it occurred to him that there were two parts to being a better person. One part was thinking about other people. The other part was not giving a toss what other people thought.

I like dogs. You always know what a dog is thinking. It has four moods. Happy, sad, cross and concentrating. Also, dogs are faithful and they do not tell lies because they cannot talk.

On the fifth day, which was a Sunday, it rained very hard. I like it when it rains hard. It sounds like white noise everywhere, which is like silence but not empty.

Everyone has learning difficulties, because learning to speak French or understanding relativity is difficult.

No one wants to know how clever you are. They don't want an insight into your mind, thrilling as it might be. They want an insight into their own.

You love someone, you've got to let something go.

For me, disability is a way of getting some extremity, some kind of very difficult situation, that throws an interesting light on people.

From a good book, I want to be taken to the very edge. I want a glimpse into that outer darkness.

If you have knowledge, let others light their candles in it.

What is called good society is usually nothing but a mosaic of polished caricatures.

It is a rule of creative ability that it does nothing of any value, while it is possessed by this afflatus of vanity.

He did not need a long life for us to measure. It was, rather, we who needed his life to be longer.

I think I'm the only president other than John Kennedy who had both parents alive during the presidency.

I object to violence because when it appears to do good, the good is only temporary; the evil it does is permanent.

I had the '80s hair and braces and a 6-3 frame as a 16-year-old.

All the world is believers! They just believe in different absurdities!

A god cannot procure death for himself, even if he wished it, which, so numerous are the evils of life, has been granted to man as our chief good.

Voodoo is a very interesting religion for the whole family, even those members of it who are dead.