The Enlightenment view of mankind is a complete myth. It leads us into thinking we're sane and rational creatures most of the time, and we're not.

I am an underwater explorer, not a treasure hunter.

The greatest discoveries all start with the question "Why?"

It is a quiet and peaceful place - and a fitting place for the remains of this greatest of sea tragedies to rest.

The advanced societies of the future will not be governed by reason. They will be driven by irrationality, by competing systems of psychopathology.

Well, when I was a kid, I grew up in San Diego next to the ocean. The ocean was my friend - my best friend.

Fiction is a branch of neurology: the scenarios of nerve and blood vessels are the written mythologies of memory and desire.

Any fool can write a novel but it takes real genius to sell it.

I surely know that there is no role in life more essential and more eternal than that of motherhood.

Be impatient. All things don't come to those who wait. Push on with what you believe because life is very short.

Sooner or later, all games become serious.

It is good to be a cynic — it is better to be a contented cat — and it is best not to exist at all.

The best compliment someone can give me is stealing my idea and making it their own.

To read is to fly: it is to soar to a point of vantage which gives a view over wide terrains of history, human variety, ideas, shared experience and the fruits of many inquiries.

Play is kids' work in that it is a form of experiential learning that contributes directly to a person's ability to handle failure, to work in teams, and to take risks.

Veterans' issues are quite close to my heart. I find it quite hard to talk about, actually.

If lifespan jumps by 30 or 40 years, that has enormous implications.

When I look at the world it fills me with sorrow, little children today are really going to suffer tomorrow.

A libertarian is someone who can believe that the police are no more than a gang of thugs without realizing that in the absence of police, thugs will gather into gangs.

Of course it was impossible to connect the dots looking forward when I was in college. But it was very, very clear looking backwards 10 years later.

I was born in Alabama and my first live music experiences were in church. Every Sunday we watched regional gospel groups on television singing their hearts out