I know I'm a rare person, a trained scientist who writes fiction, because so few contemporary novelists engage with science.

Hope is a renewable option: If you run out of it at the end of the day, you get to start over in the morning.

If you want sweet dreams, you've got to live a sweet life.

Few people know so clearly what they want. Most people can't even think what to hope for when they throw a penny in a fountain.

Finally, cooking is good citizenship. It's the only way to get serious about putting locally raised foods into your diet, which keeps farmlands healthy and grocery money in the neighborhood.

We came from Bethlehem, Georgia bearing Betty Crocker cake mixes into the jungle.

Maybe life doesn't get any better than this, or any worse, and what we get is just what we're willing to find: small wonders, where they grow.

Don't try to figure out what other people want to hear from you; figure out what you have to say.

The very least you can do in your life is to figure out what you hope for. And the most you can do is live inside that hope. Not admire it from a distance but live right in it, under its roof.

It's what you do that makes your soul.

Pain reaches the heart with electrical speed, but truth moves to the heart as slowly as a glacier.

...while social analysis must always be part of curriculum development and teaching, education policy and practice needs to be protected against the dangers of fads, obsessions and moral panics.

That is the eternal folly of man. To be chasing after the sweet flesh, without realizing that it is simply a pretty cover for the bones.

It is necessary to look forward to a harvest, however distant that may be, when some fruit will be reaped, some good effected.

—fear comes only when you don’t have faith in the outcome. And boredom comes only when you believe there’s nothing new worth learning. I simply can’t understand how any of that will occur today.

I think when you're in a relationship where you really care for the other person, when they achieve their dreams it's better than when you do yourself.

Look at life all around; everything is growing, everything is moving forward. Therefore I recommend keeping in touch with life and with art.

The media can be a really strong vehicle.

I go for two kinds of men. The kind with muscles, and the kind without.

Why don't these companies making big profits just pay people better than $14 an hour? It's kind of simple. When you're making record profits, why not? I don't get it.

I have a "Do Not Disturb" sign on my hotel door. It's time to go to "Don't Disturb". It's been "Do Not" for too long. We should embrace the contraction.