In Washington, a confidential assistant is someone who, if you don't want to know something, you go and ask him and he won't tell you.

The average dog is a nicer person than the average person.

Everyone wants to live on top of the mountain, but all the happiness and growth occurs while you're climbing it.

If you smile when no one else is around, you really mean it.

Being kind is more important than being right.

I just wish we knew a little less about his urethra and a little more about his arms sales to Iran.

I don't like food that's too carefully arranged; it makes me think that the chef is spending too much time arranging and not enough time cooking. If I wanted a picture I'd buy a painting.

Everyone starts out being an atheist. No one is born with belief in anything. Infants are atheists until they are indoctrinated.

People will generally accept facts as truth only if the facts agree with what they already believe.

Guns do not make you a killer. I think killing makes you a killer. You can kill someone with a baseball bat or a car, but no one is trying to ban you from driving to the ball game.

Computers make it easier to do a lot of things, but most of the things they make it easier to do don't need to be done.

Just above our terror, the stars painted this storyin perfect silver calligraphy. And our souls, too oftenabused by ignorance, covered our eyes with mercy.

Being brave means you create the world you want to live in.

People are so lonely, they spend their birthdays on the Internet, thanking people for wishing them a happy birthday, people who only know it’s their birthday because Facebook told them.

Medicare debates in Congress should result in better Medicare benefits for all our nation's seniors. We're not asking for special treatment for rural America, just a fair deal.

All that a critic, as critic, can give poets is the deadly encouragement that never ceases to remind them of how heavy their inheritance is.

You can't be both happy and ambitious.

I don't think of Storefront Hitchcock or Stop Making Sense as documentaries, I think of them more as performance films.

I could have said some things about Hillary Clinton that would have been unfortunate for her, too. But I don't want to interfere.

I don't follow the rules. That's kind of how I do everything.

If you've lost your faith in love and music, Oh the end won't be long...