Remember sometimes just the rush of having a crush is a temptation, even if it is inappropriate, but beware of playing with fire, you will get burned.

[quoting someone else] the American constitution is a document designed by geniuses to be eventually interpreted by idiots

Lincoln once said that America was founded on a proposition that was written by Jefferson in 1776. We are really founded on an argument about what that proposition means.

Even in the best of lives, mistakes are made.

Chronology, so the saying goes, is the last refuge of the feeble-minded and the only resort for historians.

Because he could not afford to fail, he could not afford to trust.

And the only thing to do with a sin is to confess, do penance and then, after some kind of decent interval, ask for forgiveness.

Men make history, but they can never know the history they are making.

Some models of self-control are able to achieve their serenity easily because the soul fires never burn brightly to begin with.

Washington's task was to transform the improbable into the inevitable.

I would say readers can trust my work more than anyone else's.

The rabbit hole has collapsed, and my key is melded to a nugget of worthless metal.

Better is possible. It does not take genius. It takes diligence. It takes moral clarity. It takes ingenuity. And above all, it takes a willingness to try.

I'm no different from anybody else. If I don't have a card, I can't check out these books.

There's always a little bit of personal satisfaction when you prove somebody wrong.

A shelf of classics for our young adults: Tolkien, Hesse, Casteneda, Kerouac, Salinger, Tom Robbins, and _The Last Whole Earth Catalog_.

Increasingly, I'm inspired by entrepreneurs who run nonprofit organizations that fund themselves, or for-profit organizations that achieve social missions while turning a profit.

But I was frightfully fond of the universe and wanted to address it by a diminutive. I often did so; and it never seemed to mind.

But it's only after you've played it on the road 20 or 30 times that it becomes really finished and polished...and you realize what it means, and you get the phrasing right.

I don't believe that there are dangerous writers: the danger of certain books is not in the books themselves but in the passions of their readers.

I've always enjoyed watching characters that aren't aware that they're doing anything funny. And I think that inherently makes them funnier.