The profoundly humorous writers are humorous because they are responsive to the hopeless, uncouth, concatenations of life.

Short stories can be rather stark and bare unless you put in the right details. Details make stories human, and the more human a story can be, the better.

If you're experiencing no anxiety or discomfort, the risk you're taking probably isn't worthy of you. The only risks that aren't a little scary are the ones you've outgrown.

Most people confuse wishing and wanting with pursuing. You must place your trust in action.

Optimism inspires, energizes, and brings out our best. It points the mind toward possibilities and helps us think creatively past problems.

Well, youth is the period of assumed personalities and disguises. It is the time of the sincerely insincere.

No sense being pessimistic. Wouldn't work anyway.

Too much attention on problems kills our faith in possibilities.

If you must doubt something, doubt your limits.

Your ethical muscle grows stronger every time you choose right over wrong.

Excellence calls for character . . . integrity . . . fairness . . . honesty . . . a determination to do what's right. High ethical standards, across the board.

The difficult child is the child who is unhappy. He is at war with himself; and in consequence, he is at war with the world.

Become intensely conscious of the present moment.

I think with a lifetime appointment to the Supreme Court, you can't play, you know, hide the salami, or whatever it's called.

I as an elected official would never recommend anybody to boycott any city or state.

You become aware of an illness by understanding yourself and understanding the meaning that that illness has in your own life, symbolically and, more importantly, quite literally.

My children have often asked me why I never received a Nobel Prize. I used to tell them it was because the Nobel committee couldn’t make up its mind which of my projects to recognize.

Jerusalem Syndrome is actually a rare psychological condition that occurs to some visitors to the Middle East. They get to Israel and just snap.

The blame for the maddening complications of the federal tax system goes to the people with the most money

The Indian story has never been written. Maybe I am the man to do it.