The world is a library of strange and wonderful books, and sometimes we just need to go prowling through the stacks.

Make sure your message is clear, yet that you are faithful to its complexity.

What matters are those ordinary acts of kindness and of love, not vaulting ambition with its attendant hubris and smugness.

Throughout history the exemplary teacher has never been just an instructor in a subject; he is nearly always its living advertisement.

I sometimes lie awake at night and try to imagine what would be the best period in history to spend one's seventy-odd years.

Science fiction is, after all, the art of extrapolation.

Order and surprise: these are two intertwined elements that make for any great library or collection.

Best selling authors are always worth listening to, even if you choose to ignore their advice.

I am shocked that we seemed to have learned nothing, absolutely nothing, from Vietnam.

I think the essence of [Kurt] Vonnegut's humanism lay in his emphasis on human kindness as, so to speak, our saving grace.

I think that his [Kurt Vonnegut's] appeal, though, will always be chiefly to adolescents. His sense of the world matches that of young people, who feel deeply life's absurdity.

The deepest wounds aren't the ones we get from other people hurting us. They are the wounds we give ourselves when we hurt other people.

I fly through memory to find a newborn love.

Every time government attempts to handle our affairs, it costs more and the results are worse than if we had handled them ourselves.

She's using me. And I like it.

I am obstinate and I will not give in.

The first light of human consciousness and the world's first civilizations were in Africa.

See that your children be taught, not only the labors of the earth, but the loveliness of it.

I learned a lot about acting - watching not just myself but other actors and learning how to distinguish between two great takes. It's also about one's own taste in performance.