I sometimes lie awake at night and try to imagine what would be the best period in history to spend one's seventy-odd years.

Make sure your message is clear, yet that you are faithful to its complexity.

What matters are those ordinary acts of kindness and of love, not vaulting ambition with its attendant hubris and smugness.

Throughout history the exemplary teacher has never been just an instructor in a subject; he is nearly always its living advertisement.

The world is a library of strange and wonderful books, and sometimes we just need to go prowling through the stacks.

Science fiction is, after all, the art of extrapolation.

Order and surprise: these are two intertwined elements that make for any great library or collection.

Best selling authors are always worth listening to, even if you choose to ignore their advice.

I am shocked that we seemed to have learned nothing, absolutely nothing, from Vietnam.

I think the essence of [Kurt] Vonnegut's humanism lay in his emphasis on human kindness as, so to speak, our saving grace.

I think that his [Kurt Vonnegut's] appeal, though, will always be chiefly to adolescents. His sense of the world matches that of young people, who feel deeply life's absurdity.

It might be that to surrender to happiness was to accept defeat, but it was a defeat better than many victories.

Today's tears are an investment into tomorrow's smiles.

Some thoughts are too angry to sleep. They lie awake all night and become obsessions.

Life is easy with a little offer and Competitive with facts.

The single most exciting thing you encounter in government is competence, because it's so rare.

In speaking, for convenience, of devices and expedients, I did not intend to imply that Shakespeare always deliberately aimed at the effects which he produced.

In business, I've discovered that my purpose is to do my best to my utmost ability every day. That's my standard. I learned early in my life that I had high standards.

If you aren't happy with yourself, find a way to be victorious over yourself.

The River... It's my world, and I don't want any other. What it hasn't got is not worth having, and what it doesn't know is not worth knowing. Lord! the times we've had together!

Boards and myself get along somehow.