Good fiction doesn't come out of the basic conflict of good versus bad. Instead, it comes out of a conflict between good and good.

When you love someone, you love the person as they are, and not as you'd like them to be.

Everyone thinks of changing the world, but no one thinks of changing himself.

Seize the moments of happiness, love and be loved! That is the only reality in the world, all else is folly.

Wrong does not cease to be wrong because the majority share in it.

A man is like a fraction whose numerator is what he is and whose denominator is what he thinks of himself. The larger the denominator, the smaller the fraction.

Everybody wants to change the world, but nobody thinks about changing himself.

Once we're thrown off our habitual paths, we think all is lost, but it's only here that the new and the good begins.

An arrogant person considers himself perfect. This is the chief harm of arrogance. It interferes with a person's main task in life—becoming a better person.

Real wisdom is not the knowledge of everything, but the knowledge of which things in life are necessary, which are less necessary, and which are completely unnecessary to know.

Men pray to the Almighty to relieve poverty. But poverty comes not from God's laws-it is blasphemy of the worst kind to say that. Poverty comes from man's injustice to his fellow man.

There’s no easier way to cure foolishness than to give a man leave to be foolish. And the only way to show a fellow that he’s chosen the wrong business is to let him try it.

Ahh, love, why is it so easy to let you in, but so difficult to let you out? Why couldn’t you subsist only two-sided?

I stepped on a land mine named Jayson Blair.

It is the foregiver who is freed in foregiving.

Do not fight the darkness, let the light in and the darkness will disappear.

What will matter is not your success but your significance.

I miss the $2 bill, 'cause I can break a two. $20, no. $10, no. $5, maybe, $2? Oh yeah. What do you need, a one and another one?

I have a name, I have to take advantage of it.

Every walker is a guard on patrol to protect the ineffable.

I'll keep working as long as I live because singing has taken on the feeling of joy that I had when I started, when my only responsibility was to sing well.