I rush to add that I find the Web infinitely useful for rustling up information, settling arguments or locating the legends of rock stars.

After all, spinning is its own reward. There wouldn't be carousels if it weren't so.

The scale and the brutality of our prisons are the moral scandal of American life.

We breathe in our first language, and swim in our second.

The special virtue of freedom is not that it makes you richer and more powerful but that it gives you more time to understand what it means to be alive.

The loneliness of the expatriate is of an odd and complicated kind, for it is inseparable from the feeling of being free, of having escaped.

Frauds master our minds; magicians, like poets and lovers, engage them in a permanent maze of possibilities.

What drives innovation is abundance and ease, not the pressure of scarcity.

Sometimes having a good time can be the outward evidence of a deep re-thinking.

Wit and puns aren't just décor in the mind; they're essential signs that the mind knows it's on, recognizes its own software, can spot the bugs in its own program.

Fanaticism comes in as many flavors as there are human beings.

It is impossible to come to God and not experience changes in your life

It's incredible how nature sets females up to take care of people, and yet it is tricky for them to take care of themselves.

God has a plan for your life and so does the devil. Whose plan will you choose to live out?

It's pretty easy to see that... wealth doesn't really equal happiness.

The minute anyone makes you feel weird and non-included or not supported, you know, either beat it or tell them to beat it.

Looking and seeing are two different things. What matters is the relationship with the subject.

The problem of expressing the contributions that Benny Carter has made to popular music is so tremendous it completely fazes me, so extraordinary a musician is he.

Most activism is brought about by us ordinary people.

Life can only be understood backwards; but it must be lived forwards.

Spending a lot of time alone, gave me a lot of time to think. A lot of time to think gave me the time to write songs.