[My kids] complained about Secret Service as they became teenagers, and Secret Service has done the very best job they could accommodating them, so it hasn't restricted any of their activities.

You can’t let your failures define you. You have to let your failures teach you.

Change will not come if we wait for some other person or some other time. We are the ones we've been waiting for. We are the change that we seek.

Keep exploring. Keep dreaming. Keep asking why. Don’t settle for what you already know. Never stop believing in the power of your ideas, your imagination, your hard work to change the world.

When ignorant folks want to advertise their ignorance, you don't really have to do anything, you just let them talk.

Just because we have the best hammer does not mean that every problem is a nail.

Change is never easy, but always possible.

Don’t ever let anybody tell you that your efforts don’t matter or that your voice doesn’t count. Don’t ever believe that you can’t make a difference. You have.

Where you are right now doesn't have to determine where you'll end up.

Learning to stand in somebody else's shoes, to see through their eyes, that's how peace begins. And it's up to you to make that happen. Empathy is a quality of character that can change the world.

If somebody is different from you, that's not something you criticize, that's something that you appreciate.

After you find out all the things that can go wrong, your life becomes less about living and more about waiting.

When in doubt, be ridiculous.

We all make mistakes. It is in our human nature. It just happens, it's nature's way to keep life interesting.

Some are meant to make rules, some are meant to break them. Others just follow.

Musical practice is too young an art in America to warrant a search for men with a conductor's gift.

If there's anything weirder than an introverted writer going to lots of social functions, it's an introverted writer being converted into an accidental guru.

An extreme rigor is sure to arm everything against it.

Every powerful movement has had its philosophy which has gripped the mind, fired the imagination and captured the devotion of its adherents.

I think all writers have a bit of genius in them, and a bit of talent. Genius retreats but talent improves.

In Sri Lanka a well-told lie is worth a thousand facts.