I was a literature major in college and that was my thing, books.

Part of me longs to do a job where there's not a gray area.

It's an interesting combination: Having a great fear of being alone, and having a desperate need for solitude and the solitary experience. That's always been a tug of war for me.

I already did my coming out about a thousand years ago, back in the stone age.

Normal is not something to aspire to, it's something to get away from.

Being understood is not the most essential thing in life.

I've always had this idea that I wanted movies to make people better not worse.

Love and respect are the most important aspects of parenting, and of all relationships.

Let how you live your life stand for something, no matter how small and incidental it may seem.

Privacy above all else. Some day, in the future, people will look back and remember how beautiful it once was.

Knowing what paint a painter uses or having an understanding of where he was in the history of where he came from doesn't hurt your appreciation of the painting.

Music can name the unnameable and communicate the unknowable.

We decided that the environment was an integral part of our policies and the political thrust of our government. We gave it the priority and we sustained it with the money required to make it happen.

In America, educators punish those who actually think for themselves. There is only acceptance for popular opinion.

What's the best way to get a good spouse? The best single way is to deserve a good spouse because a good spouse is by definition not nuts.

We label things through value systems that we have developed. But nothing is or is not unless we feel it is that way. We give ground to reality by creating it.

A strong relationship is an honest relationship, and no honest relationship is all peaches and cream. Love is the key. Where love abides, anger is but a passing visitor.

When I look at my family, that's all life means, right there.

As soon as you know what you're doing, you're doing it wrong.

Mathematics is not a separate entity. It owes a great deal of its power and its beauty to other disciplines.

And we didn't have cell phones. If you made plans to meet someone in a snow storm, and they didn't show up, you just had to assume they were devoured by wolves and go on with your life.