Men are rather beholden ... generally to chance or anything else, than to logic, for the invention of arts and sciences.

It is impossible to love and to be wise.

Silence is the sleep that nourishes wisdom.

Begin doing what you want to do now. We are not living in eternity. We have only this moment, sparkling like a star in our hand - and melting like a snowflake.

If a man will begin with certainties, he shall end in doubts, but if he will content to begin with doubts, he shall end in certainties.

All rising to great places is by a winding stair.

It's not what we profess but what we practice that gives us integrity.

Man prefers to believe what he prefers to be true.

There is a difference between happiness and wisdom: he that thinks himself the happiest man is really so; but he that thinks himself the wisest is generally the greatest fool.

Read not to contradict and confute, nor to believe and take for granted... but to weigh and consider.

Life is a marshmallow, easy to chew but hard to swallow.

Who has the time to become politically active, or even politically aware, when one is struggling just to stay alive and feed one’s children?

My mother cooked her last Christmas standing rib roast in 1987 and died a few weeks afterward.

I believe that the strength in America is individual families and communities.

When I'm working, I'm not so much disciplined as obsessive. I have this feeling that I need to clear everything away and get this down.

Fight if you wish. Deny what is before you if it comforts you. But nothing you do can change your fate.

Popularity is the slutty little cousin of prestige, my friend.

I don't make my own schedule - it's constructed around my sons' school schedules.

I don't know how tall I am or how much I weigh. Because I don't want anybody to know my identity. I'm like a superhero. Call me Basketball Man.

I try to know as much as I can about a book before the beginning, but I never know exactly where it's going to end.

It's like love making, the foreplay is the biggest part, the same thing as comedy. If you can frame your show in such a way that the funny jokes become funnier.