The arts can sharpen the vision, quicken the intellect, preserve the memory, activate the conscience, enhance the understanding and refresh the language.

This is my simple religion. No need for temples. No need for complicated philosophy. Your own mind, your own heart is the temple. Your philosophy is simple kindness.

You can buy a good pasta but when you cook it yourself it has another feeling.

I blame all the craziness of people buying houses, re-doing them and selling them, on these programs on television where they are redoing your homes and kitchens.

... what a fatal thing in pictures, books, or human lives, is a lack of proportion.

He who is lord of himself, and exists upon his own resources, is a noble but a rare being.

It's so easy to write songs about misery and hard times and sadness. It's much more difficult to write songs about happy and chirpy stuff.

I'm convinced in 100 years Obama will have an important place in the civic pantheon of American life.

My mom and my sisters were amazing; they always see the good in people. My mom, she doesn't know how to write and read much, but she's one of the most fantastic women I've met in my life.

Revolution begins with the self, in the self.

The true is the name of whatever proves itself to be good in the way of belief, and good, too, for definite, assignable reasons.