I put forward a budget of what I called "middle-class economics" that continues to be fiscally prudent but makes necessary investments for us to continue the economic momentum and job growth.

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.

I don't regret any past. I am not there. I am not sorry not to make pictures, because I know one day I will do it. I intend to live 150 years.

Hitchcock had to fight to the death to make his movies.

Had Mittag-Leffler had his way, I should have to wait until the year 1984, which to me seemed too great a demand!

I mean, we do believe in due process in America. I thought we did.

I've waffled before. I'll waffle again.

My proudest moment was when I was in high school, some jackass tried to give me a wedgy. I came prepared, I went commando. It tickled.

When we try to write a pop song, we go for standard pop arrangements, even to the point where we will go to the key change at the end, which is really cheesy.

I've grown up knowing that you put as much of your private life out there as you feel comfortable with.

Nothing remains but to hope the end will come to extinguish the unrelenting pain of waiting for it.

A reason I became a writer was to escape the hopelessness and despair of the real world and enter the world of hope I could create with my imagination.