Give up on trying to be original. Every song has been sung, every picture has been painted, and every story has been told. The best one can do is sing, draw, or tell it again well.

I have no special desire to go crawl around in caves, but I really like the word [spelunking] and want to use it in conversation. I do a lot of things just to use words I like.

I also believe, without any supporting evidence, that cats are evil.

I would wish you gods speed but I don’t want you to waste time looking for him.

Banks should actively encourage companies that are doing a good job on environmental and social fronts. Banking for community development is the banking of future.

People who have committed to a service/advocacy role will tell you that some of the sublimest pleasure they have ever experienced comes in the context of that work. You get way more than you give.

Speaking generally, punishment hardens and numbs, it produces concentration, it sharpens the consciousness of alienation, it strengthens the power of resistance.

Fundamentally, American society is composed of individuals who don't go out of their way to do each other favours.

I was exposed to violence while I was still in the womb - my father punched my mother in the stomach while she was pregnant with me.

I dimly guess, from blessings known, of greater out of sight.

When one cannot appraise out of one's own experience, the temptation to blunder is minimized, but even when one can, appraisal seems chiefly useful as appraisal of the appraiser.

Are you so unobservant as not to have found out that sanity and happiness are an impossible combination?

I see so much more than I used to see. The effect has been to depress and sadden and hurt me terribly.