In most poetic expressions of patriotism, it is impossible to distinguish what is one of the greatest human virtues from the worst human vice, collective egotism.

Thousands have lived without love, not one without water.

Water is the soul of the Earth.

We are all here on earth to help others; what on earth the others are here for I don't know.

We would rather be ruined than changed. We would rather die in our dread than climb the cross of the moment and let our illusions die.

Civilizations should be measured by the degree of diversity attained and the degree of unity retained.

Herds of reindeer move across Miles and miles of golden moss

All sins tend to be addictive, and the terminal point of addiction is damnation.

'Healing,' Papa would tell me, 'is not a science, but the intuitive art of wooing nature.'

Few people take an interest in Iceland, but in those few the interest is passionate.

No good opera plot can be sensible, for people do not sing when they are feeling sensible.

Exposing corruption, brandishing truth.

I should have bailed. That little voice had my back. That little voice is older than I am. It's older than the oldest person who ever lived. I should have listened to that voice.

Fundamentally all writing is about the same thing: it's about dying about the brief flicker of time we have here and the frustrations that it creates.

Sometimes it's the smallest decisions that can change your life forever.

Same thing, like my commercials are often times really funny because I tend to find 30 seconds is a really good amount of time to tell a joke.

It is the photographs that gives one the vivid realization of what actually took place. (On photographs from Abu Ghraib prison.)

Right knows no boundaries, and justice no frontiers; the brotherhood of man is not a domestic institution.

You're Mexican until you make money and then you're Spanish.

For hundreds of years Iranians have been migrating to many parts of the world. They took Islamic culture to other parts of the world and established it there.

I'm writing a new love story, set in eastern North Carolina. Surprise, surprise, huh?