Here’s the thing about rights. They’re not actually supposed to be voted on. That’s why they’re called rights.

A handkerchief can never be put in another pocket after it has been in one pocket. I don't walk under ladders. I have items of clothing that are lucky for me. That rotates, but I am luck-oriented.

Clearly, there has been a lack of imagination about how much can go wrong.

If you're someone people count on, particularly in difficult moments, that's a sign of a life lived honorably.

I have a file of letters and bits of ephemera from friends who have died. I have had lots of friends who died of AIDS.

I'm undoubtedly a liberal, which means that I'm in almost total agreement with the Eisenhower-era Republican party platform.

Hopefully life is long. Do stuff you will enjoy thinking about and telling stories about for many years to come. Do stuff you will want to brag about.

I really believe in trying to increase the amount of useful information in the world and in being accurate in the sense that you can take what I say to the bank, even if you disagree with me.

Bernie Sanders are the only person who talks about the kinds of things that might be driving people to support Donald Trump in such large numbers in the Republican Party.

Activism is setting a goal of something you would like to be different, and figuring out what would have to change to achieve that goal. It's sort of like math.

If you took a cracked pot and you cracked that cracked pot, you'd be approaching the level of cracked pottery we are talking about here.

My mother... she is beautiful, softened at the edges and tempered with a spine of steel. I want to grow old and be like her.

To misuse wealth is a great fault.

Never tell to much. The monster is always scarier when it is still under the child's bed.

Enough tiny sharp jabs can cut as deeply as any knife.

This act would cost them. It was forbidden, in her world and his, but all he wanted was to hear her moan.

PREHISTORIC, adj. Belonging to an early period and a museum. Antedating the art and practice of perpetuating falsehood.

I used the word 'prose' in the Trans-Siberian in the early Latin sense of prosa dictu. Poem seemed to me too pretentious, too narrow. Prose is more open, popular.

For most folks, no news is good news; for the press, good news is not news.

My projects are just side effects of what I obsess over, what I chat about, what random things pop into my head, what I dream at night.

Country is based on folk music, which has been around for centuries—” “So has the plague.