I do tend to be almost kind of Pollyanna-ish person.

The thing that is really hard, and really amazing, is giving up on being perfect and beginning the work of becoming yourself.

I would be the most content if my children grew up to be the kind of people who think decorating consists mostly of building enough bookshelves.

A finished person is a boring person.

There is a little boy inside the man who is my brother... Oh, how I hated that little boy. And how I love him too.

After all those years as a woman hearing 'not thin enough, not pretty enough, not smart enough, not this enough, not that enough,' almost overnight I woke up one morning and thought, 'I'm enough.'

Books are the plane, and the train, and the road. They are the destination, and the journey. They are home.

There is a lot of talk now about metal detectors and gun control. Both are good things. But they are no more a solution than forks and spoons are a solution to world hunger.

Look back, to slavery, to suffrage, to integration and one thing is clear. Fashions in bigotry come and go. The right thing lasts.

You are the only person alive who has sole custody of your life ... Your entire life ... Not just the life of your mind, but the life of your heart. Not just your bank account, but your soul.

America is a country that seems forever to be toddler or teenager, at those two stages of human development characterized by conflict between autonomy and security.

To be is to stand for.

I've never done anything else in my life other than preach and be an activist. Way before I was known.

He just hit himself in the dinger with a rubber.

Let the grand errand into America never be forgotten.

We started with 53,000 people. Half are gone, but surprisingly, most are still here!

I think the education I've had as an actor I would never have had at university.

Once you're a chess player, you spend a lot of time thinking about the game and you can't get it completely out of your head.

That we occasionally violate our own stated moral code does not imply that we are insincere in espousing that code.

I've got some words of wisdom.

In a word, poetry can not exist without emotion, or, if you will, without a movement of the soul which regulates the words.