My artistic approach is that you're supposed to be a little baffled.

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.

The holiest place on Earth, is not a temple or a church, but our relationship to one another.

Hope is the greatest gift and the greatest evil...Hope saved us and hope might yet kill us.

Things are often exactly as they seem. Confusing isn't it.

Those who knew Lincoln described him as an extraordinarily funny man. Humor was an essential aspect of his temperament. He laughed, he explained, so he did not weep.

I didn't know how to grab your best material and put it together into a comedy set. I would just choose subjects and do it onstage. That's what I learned. I didn't know how to put a set together.

Physical hunger and physical poverty is something I could only imagine. I've been poor when I was in China... As kids we never had to starve, but just didn't have enough meat, enough rice.

When grace happens, generosity happens. Unsquashable, eyepopping bigheartedness happens.

War: A wretched debasement of all the pretenses of civilization.

I don't think anyone can be more of a predator than a human being.

I want people to be like, 'Your album's just as good as Kendrick [Lamar]'s or Esperanza Spalding or Beck. I work just as hard as them.