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

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.

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.

Over all, there are now more people under “correctional supervision” in America-more than six million-than were in the Gulag Archipelago under Stalin at its height.

Knowing what she did to him made her feel powerful, just as knowing what he did to her made her feel weak.

I can't stand light. I hate weather. My idea of heaven is moving from one smoke-filled room to another.

When you see a person who has been given more than you in money and beauty, then look to those who have been given less.

I want to have enough space to, I don't know, think thoughts. I mean, I just - I don't know that I'm capable of having an exciting, profound thought every week that's worth a column.

I judge wisely...as if nothin ever surprise me, Loungin, between two pillars of ivory. I'm lively, my dome piece is like buildin stones in Greece. My poems are deep, from ancient thrones I speak.

People may expect too much of journalism. Not only do they expect it to be entertaining, they expect it to be true.

There are real threats but there's a difference between recognizing real threats and an irrational kind of apocalyptic threat.

If I have any talent at all, it is not for doing but for being.

When I see birches bend to left and right... I like to think some boy's been swinging them.

I'm more of a creative learner, ... I do very well in projects, but I was not good at memorizing all of that material in the introductory courses.