Nothing in a graduate degree in art history prepares you for the eloquence of the eraser.

After all, spinning is its own reward. There wouldn't be carousels if it weren't so.

The scale and the brutality of our prisons are the moral scandal of American life.

We breathe in our first language, and swim in our second.

The special virtue of freedom is not that it makes you richer and more powerful but that it gives you more time to understand what it means to be alive.

The loneliness of the expatriate is of an odd and complicated kind, for it is inseparable from the feeling of being free, of having escaped.

Frauds master our minds; magicians, like poets and lovers, engage them in a permanent maze of possibilities.

What drives innovation is abundance and ease, not the pressure of scarcity.

Sometimes having a good time can be the outward evidence of a deep re-thinking.

Wit and puns aren't just décor in the mind; they're essential signs that the mind knows it's on, recognizes its own software, can spot the bugs in its own program.

Fanaticism comes in as many flavors as there are human beings.

Only those who have the great capacity of genuine trust can enter this realm [the realm of the buddhas]. Those who have no trust are unable to accept it, however much they hear it.

No. You stop. Stop thinking you're the son your father disowned. You're not who he expected you to be

Trying to eliminate worldly temptations only makes our spiritual growth limited.

My father always said, 'If you love what you do, you won't mind slogging through it for several hours a day.

Mexico's a great place to overcome a drug addiction.

Every work of art has one indispensable mark ... the center of it is simple, however much the fulfillment may be complicated.

The older I get, the more I feel that color is what painting is. Painting is primarily color.

The law of sacrifice is uniform throughout the world. To be effective it demands the sacrifice of the bravest and the most spotless.

[E]very job is composed of many small details, any one of which, if overlooked, can create big problems later.

In a world where wealth is growing, you can get away with printing money. Doubling the debt over the next 20 years is not a problem.