If you at least try to do the things that excite you, it will make you a more expansive and present person - you’ll feel, at the end of your life, that at least you took the shot.

I tend to foster drama via bleakness. If I want the reader to feel sympathy for a character, I cleave the character in half, on his birthday. And then it starts raining. And he's made of sugar.

What I regret most in my life are failures of kindness.

What I regret most in my life are failures of kindness. Those moments when another human being was there, in front of me, suffering, and I responded . . . sensibly. Reservedly. Mildly.

Do those things that incline you toward the big questions, and avoid the things that would reduce you and make you trivial.

Developing our sympathetic compassion is not only possible but the only reason for us to be here on earth.

According to me, your life is going to be a gradual process of becoming kinder and more loving. Hurry up. Speed it along. Start right now.

It's a big world, and I really like it.

Character is that sum total of moments we can't explain.

The generalizing writer is like the passionate drunk, stumbling into your house mumbling: I know I'm not being clear, exactly, but don't you kind of feel what I'm feeling?

Kindness, it turns out, is hard - it starts out all rainbows and puppy dogs, and expands to include . . . well, EVERYTHING.

Not easy to state the change you made.If I'm alive now, I was dead, Though, like a stone, unbothered by it.

The ease with which moneyforgives bayonets and liesto justify the massacre with reasoned arguments

Man can no longer live for himself alone. We must realize that all life is valuable and that we are united to all life. From this knowledge comes our spiritual relationship with the universe.

The finance enchains with golden bonds states and peoples, the economy becomes nomadic, the life uprooted.

I've seen time and time again the way that the process of trying to say something dignifies and improves a person.

Who said that every wish would be heard and answered when wished on an evening star? Somebody thought of it and someone believed it, and look what its done so far.

All conflict is about difference; whether the difference is race religion, or nationality.

Privilege is the greatest enemy of right.

My parents said sticks and stones will break your bones but names will never hurt you. But I always felt a sense of exhilaration after a fight; it was the names that really hurt me.

Love hath made thee a tame snake