I was eccentric, even as a kid. I was an early reader, an early talker. I was very curious in a way that maybe the other kids weren't. I was a little more outgoing.

The more I expect, the more unhappy I am going to be. The more I accept, the more serene I am.

Zoos are becoming facsimiles - or perhaps caricatures - of how animals once were in their natural habitat. If the right policies toward nature were pursued, we would need no zoos at all.

Acceptance doesn't mean resignation; it means understanding that something is what it is and that there's got to be a way through it.

I am careful not to confuse excellence with perfection. Excellence I can reach for; perfection is God's business.

Our challenges don’t define us, our actions do.

If you fixate on the worst-case scenario and it actually happens, you’ve lived it twice.

Family is not an important thing. It's everything.

I like to encourage people to realize that any action is a good action if it's proactive and there is positive intent behind it.

One's dignity may be assaulted, vandalized and cruelly mocked, but cannot be taken away unless it is surrendered.

Medical science has proven time and again that when the resources are provided, great progress in the treatment, cure, and prevention of disease can occur.

Hassan couldn't read a first-grade textbook but he'd read me plenty. That was a little unsettling but also sort of comfortable to have someone who always knew what you needed.

You may not be able to change the world for the better, but the world is able to change you for the worst, don't give them the rock you stand on.

When I find the guy who torched that forest, I'm going to eat him. And I'm only going to half-cook him first.-Sergeant Schlock

I hated being imprisoned in my own home, my wolf hated it.

I'm filled with admiration, delight, and gratitude at discovering James Lasdun's poems in A Jump Start. He has wit, speed, intelligence, a keen eye, precision, and imagination of a high order.

It’s been a tsunami of media and I’ve been riding it on a mercury surfboard.

I think the best thing a parent can do, when raising a child, is simply get out of their way.

Here are fruits, flowers, leaves and branches, and here is my heart which beats only for you.

Persistence overshadows even talent as the most valuable resource shaping the quality of life.

It has amazed me that the most incongruous traits should exist in the same person and, for all that, yield a plausible harmony.