But when we came out of camp, that's when I first realized that being in camp, that being Japanese-American, was something shameful.

I spent my boyhood behind the barbed wire fences of American internment camps and that part of my life is something that I wanted to share with more people.

Our differences in beliefs do not truly separate us, or elevate us over others. Rather, they highlight the rich tapestry that is humanity.

If you have to make laws to hurt a group of people just to prove your morals and faith, then you have no true morals or faith to prove.

You know, I grew up in two American internment camps, and at that time I was very young.

We should indeed keep calm in the face of difference, and live our lives in a state of inclusion and wonder at the diversity of humanity.

It’s really hard to hate someone for being different when you’re too busy laughing together.

The only thing worse than human ignorance is human pride in that ignorance.

The starship Enterprise was a metaphor starship Earth, and the vision was that the strength of this starship lay in its diversity.

You know, when a man is raped you never hear about what he was wearing.

And it seems to me important for a country, for a nation to certainly know about its glorious achievements but also to know where its ideals failed, in order to keep that from happening again.

My love for you is a prayer, she thought. Love is the only prayer I know.

As I have said before, I had no illusions about my performing ability. But I did not know that my despair was brought about not because I had no talent but because I did not know how to develop it.

Doubtless there are times when controversy becomes a necessary evil. But let us remember that it is an evil.

I finally returned to Iran in 1979, when I got my degree in English and American literature, and stayed for 18 years in the Islamic republic.

Big doesn't necessarily mean better. Sunflowers aren't better than violets.

If you live for fame, men may turn against you.

First, you decide what you want specifically; and second, you decide if you're willing to pay the price to make it happen, and then pay that price.

Actually we did not have the feelings we said we had until we spoke them--at least I didn't; to phrase them was to invent them and own them.

Jesus is absolutely at the centre of Western civilisation and part of my fascination with him is, why? What is it about this particular man and his story?

Teach me, dear creature, how to think and speak; Lay open to my earthy-gross conceit, Smother'd in errors, feeble, shallow, weak, The folded meaning of your words' deceit.