Some Westerners […] have argued that the West does not have problems with Islam but only with violent Islamist extremists. Fourteen hundred years of history demonstrate otherwise.

It is one thing to lose people you love. It is another to lose yourself. That is a greater loss.

A kid of your age—any kid—could get hold of matches if she wanted to, burn up the house or whatever. But not many do. Why would they want to?

I have to tell you that the innovation and the technology and the entrepreneurship of the world still lies in the United States of America.

Think of yourself as dead. You have lived your life. Now, take what's left and live it properly. What doesn't transmit light creates its own darkness.

Fame is like a castle. Castles are beautiful to dream and wonderful to watch, but too encircled to live in!

The lower you are in the hierarchy the worse your health, the higher you are, the better your health.

A traveler of taste will notice that the wise are polite all over the world, but the fool only at home.

In conceptual art the idea or concept is the most important aspect of the work

The suffering man ought really to consume his own smoke; there is no good in emitting smoke till you have made it into fire.

Twice the Republicans in the California legislature tried to block my seating because of my trips to Hanoi.