I never realized before this the emotional power of some really simple, corny tropes: people with top hats, people with batons, confetti going off, how important it is to smile.

It is only by going through a volume of work that you will close that gap, and your work will be as good as your ambitions.

The most important possible thing you can do is do a lot of work.

We're Jews, my family, and Jews break down into two distinct subcultures: book Jews and money Jews. We were money Jews.

Not enough gets said about the importance of abandoning crap.

You can criticize yourself to a point to do something better, or you criticize yourself to a point where you inhibit yourself.

Great stories happen to those who can tell them.

We live in a world where joy and empathy and pleasure are all around us, there for the noticing.

It takes a while. It's gonna take you a while. It's normal to take a while. You just have to fight your way through that.

You'd think that radio was around long enough that someone would have coined a word for staring into space.

It's not a terribly original thing to say, but I love Raymond Carver. For one thing, he's fun to read out loud.

People make mistakes, it's just part of life. But, it's what we do with those mistakes that matters. What matters is what we learn from the mistakes, not what the mistake is.

An ethical idealist, a person whom embraces the honorable philosophy of ethical idealism, performs acts that are honest, pure, and righteous regardless of their fearfulness.

True perfection has to be imperfect. I know that sounds foolish, but it's true.

No pastor, no spiritual leader, is ever able to take his people any further than he himself has gone with God.

The new spirituality is that it will produce an experience in human encounters in which we become a living demonstration of the basic spiritual teaching 'We are all one.'

Every stage of life has its troubles, and no man is content with his own age.

My relationship to reality has been so utterly skewed for so long that I don't even notice it any more. It's just my reality.

The countenance is more eloquent than the tongue.

I think the Earth and everything around it is connected - the sky and the planets and the stars and everything else we see as a mystery.

God is not interested in our public displays of piety. He's not interested in religion in terms of the outward show. He's interested in godliness.