I've heard people in the Middle East tell me that the most inspiring thing for them as people struggling against dictatorship in the Middle East is the memory of the civil rights movement.

Fears don't exist in isolation. They tend to rise and fall depending on what people think they can do about them.

I think the most inspiring thing that Americans can do for the rest of the world is struggle against the evils in our own society.

The top line is that hubris is a disease that comes from success.

There are real threats but there's a difference between recognizing real threats and an irrational kind of apocalyptic threat.

Foreign policy is a little bit like a guy who goes to Las Vegas. If you win too much, then you eventually bet the mortgage. You start to think you are infallible.

I hope Barack Obama puts another woman on the Supreme Court. And this time, I hope it's a woman with kids.

The gift of literature is the grace of knowledge.

Some people make tunes, but it is lines that run like moving messages through my head. Whatever else I am saying and doing often has no bearing on this inner, verbal life.

I sit beside the momentThat stares at silenceBefore anything could happen

Wrong turns make the right turn all the more worthwhile, once discovered.

There's bad people since the beginning of time. Literally one of the first four human beings was someone who killed somebody. So that's never going to change, unfortunately.

I don't know, but I think it's quite possible that the more science you teach kids in school the more it turns them off, so I don't know. I mean you never can tell which way it will go.

Potter! There are hundreds of people thundering through my pub!

I would say that since I was nine years old I've always wanted to write and direct horror movies and action movies. There's never been a time in my life where that wasn't all I wanted to do.

I love you more than words. And I am a big fan of words.

I'm a working man in my prime cleaning windows.