I found it really disturbing to see a novelist writing a diatribe about Islam and Muslim radical extremists, blurring the distinction between the two.

Gandhi saw how people have to re-think their own individuality before engaging in political activity. Otherwise they're just playing the game that the adversary has set out.

In America, you don't even have proper holidays. It's really one of the most prosperous slave societies in history. People work their asses off all year long and get two weeks off! It's incredible.

The people who encouraged me weren't necessarily writers or readers themselves. They were people who were just pleased to see me devote my life to reading and writing.

The idea that human beings can make history, that is something quite unique to the modern West.

We need to infuse politics with ideas like compassion and empathy, and a sense that we live in an interdependent world.

The asymmetries of power that have shaped relations between the West and the rest of the world also exist in the realm of literary criticism.

Most suffering is human-made and avoidable. It's mostly in your head.

Freedom of speech doesn't guarantee great literature.

In the modern world, nationalism remains a very important force. We delude ourselves into thinking that globalization has made all of that redundant and that everyone just wants to be like America.

I think what's important and extraordinarily practical about Buddhism, is that it offers very concrete methods for people to work with.

In Proverbs, a wisdom book of the Hebrew Scriptures, a cat would find a few “wisdom” passages as noxious as the Garden of Eden passages. Again the symbology of fruit being eaten

I have kept a steady focus on restoring public faith in our state government since taking office July 1. Now it is time to make even bigger and bolder gains through legislative action.

Have character; don't be a character.

More than anything, all I have ever wanted is to be close to someone. More than anything, all I have ever wanted is to feel as if i wasn't alone.

The Organization of American States couldn't pour piss out of a boot if the instructions were written on the heel.

It is an easy thing to call names; any fool is equal to that ... and the weapon of vituperation is generally used by those who lack brains for argument or are upon the wrong side.

You may go days without thinking of God, but there's never a moment when He's not thinking of you.

Even if I live not in a big city, even if I detest to go to parties, I love street fairs and long conversations with people in the countryside.

The last 15 years, there has been no recorded warming. Contrary to all the theories that they are expounding, there should have been warming over the last 15 years. It hasn't happened.

I make decisions to do movies based on the cast. I'd just been working with Zach Galifianakis on 'The Hangover', and I was thinking, I've got to find something to do with this guy immediately.