I don't buy the hype when everybody is saying how wonderful things are and how great I am, and I don't get too down when people say, "This is a disaster and he's done for."

You can’t let your failures define you. You have to let your failures teach you.

Change will not come if we wait for some other person or some other time. We are the ones we've been waiting for. We are the change that we seek.

Keep exploring. Keep dreaming. Keep asking why. Don’t settle for what you already know. Never stop believing in the power of your ideas, your imagination, your hard work to change the world.

When ignorant folks want to advertise their ignorance, you don't really have to do anything, you just let them talk.

Just because we have the best hammer does not mean that every problem is a nail.

Change is never easy, but always possible.

Don’t ever let anybody tell you that your efforts don’t matter or that your voice doesn’t count. Don’t ever believe that you can’t make a difference. You have.

Where you are right now doesn't have to determine where you'll end up.

Learning to stand in somebody else's shoes, to see through their eyes, that's how peace begins. And it's up to you to make that happen. Empathy is a quality of character that can change the world.

If somebody is different from you, that's not something you criticize, that's something that you appreciate.

The only real fall of man is his noneucharistic life in a noneucharistic world.

When I write I like to give equal justice to lyrics, too. I want the song to have meaning for me so I can make it have meaning for the audience.

Balls to ten minutes.

America is a very seductive place in terms of lifestyle and comfort, but it wasn't for me.

Keep it simple: own as little as you can get away with, schedule everything, keep a notebook, don't let technology enslave you.

It is neglect of the Bible which makes so many a prey to the first false teacher whom they hear.

It really takes a hero to live any kind of spiritual life without religious belief.

Novels seem to me to be richer, broader, deeper, more enjoyable than poems.

I'm not going to assume liberals are stupid, as they do with conservatives. No, I'll attribute it instead to more fraud and deceit.