The true American patriot is by definition skeptical of the government.

Like Lincoln, I would like to believe the ballot is stronger than the bullet. Then again, he said that before he got shot.

Being a nerd, which is to say going too far and caring too much about a subject, is the best way to make friends I know.

The modern mocha is a bittersweet concoction of imperialism, genocide, invention, and consumerism served with whipped cream on top

My lips are chapped from the winds of change.

While I gave up God a long time ago, I never shook the habit of wanting to believe in something. So I replaced my creed of everlasting life with life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.

The whole point of Louis Armstrong is that no one can really figure him out. There was a while where I thought you could try.

History is one war after another with a bunch of murders and natural disasters in between.

What are you hiding? No one ever asks that.

I no longer drink nearly as much as I used to but, still, my motto is Sine coffea nihil sum. Without coffee, I'm nothing.

You know, it's always good to have a synonym just for variety.

The secret of happiness is to see all the marvels of the world, and never to forget the drops of oil on the spoon.

If Annabeth's mother was Athena, the goddess of wisdom, then why didn't Annabeth know better than to fall off a cliff?

Liberty and Union now and for ever one and inseparable!

Don't pretend like you know me 'cause you shook some neighborhood tree and got a li'l rotten fruit.

Kitty: I thought your ladyship was ill. I wanted to help you. Lady deWinter: I ill? Do you take me for a weak woman? When I am insulted I do not feel ill - I avenge myself. Do you hear?

It's a vast, lonely, forbidding expanse of nothing rather like clouds and clouds of pumice stone. And it certainly does not appear to be a very inviting place to live or work.

Falling in love indicated that your genes were complementary to those of the loved one. It told you nothing about when your personalities and sexualities were compatible.

Easy, Marks,' he whispered. 'One of us has to have some self-control, and it really should be you.

But when one believes in the reality of things, making them visible by artificial means is not quite the same as feeling that they are close at hand.

I often joke that I straddle psychosis and neurosis, and that being an artist keeps me in the middle, so I can work between the two.