If one reads enough books one has a fighting chance. Or better, one's chances of survival increase with each book one reads.

Everybody likes to have a place to think, to meditate, to eat a burrito.

If you let people into your life a little bit, they can be pretty damn amazing.

He loved her, of course, but better than that, he chose her, day after day. Choice: that was the thing.

Life is a constant struggle between being an individual and being a member of the community.

If you teach kids how to tell stories, they have a better chance at everything.

What kind of life can you have in a house without books?

Don't live up to your stereotypes.

When you resort to violence to prove a point, you’ve just experienced a profound failure of imagination.

Do you know why the Indian rain dances always worked? Because the Indians would keep dancing until it rained.

Well, I think the worst part about tribalism is its tendency to fundamentalize, and if I can fight fundamentalism in any of its forms I'm happy.

What we define ourselves us can sometimes bring forth the best images of ourselves--or vice versa, will create some of the worst restrictions we place on our lives.

I felt somewhat like a fire hydrant – with everyone marking their territory around me.

The greatest leaders can inspire you and lead the way without ever having to give you their back.

To this day, with all of these muscle-bound guys, nobody hit the ball further than Mickey Mantle, with his natural strength.

In the future society, i.e. the communist society that we want to build, we are not going to establish charity institution, as there shall be no needy or poor, and no alms-giving and alms-taking.

I hate a man who swallows [his food], affecting not to know what he is eating. I suspect his taste in higher matters.

What the world most needs today are negative virtues - not minding people, not being huffy, touchy, irritable or revengeful.

I think with a lifetime appointment to the Supreme Court, you can't play, you know, hide the salami, or whatever it's called.

With every song that I write, I compare it to the Beatles. The thing is, they only got there before me. If I'd been born at the same time as John Lennon, I'd have been up there.

Thoughts become perception, perception becomes reality. Alter your thoughts, alter your reality.