When parents die, all of the partings of the past are reevoked with the realization that this time they will not return.

We are not what we know but what we are willing to learn.

The past empowers the present, and the sweeping footsteps leading to this present mark the pathways to the future.

The human species thinks in metaphors and learns through stories.

What would it be like to have not only color vision but culture vision, the ability to see the multiple worlds of others.

There are few things as toxic as a bad metaphor. You can't think without metaphors.

As you get up in the morning, as you make decisions, as you spend money, make friends, make commitments, you are creating a piece of art called your life.

The timing of death, like the ending of a story, gives a changed meaning to what preceded it.

Worlds can be found by a child and an adult bending down and looking together under the grass stems or at the skittering crabs in a tidal pool.

Every loss recapitulates earlier losses, but every affirmation of identity echoes earlier moments of clarity.

Goals too clearly defined can become blinkers.

Writing isn't only about a completed piece of work.It’s about the writer you’re becoming while creating.

Science is a kind of worship to find the truth.

Ballet is good, because it makes you stand up tall.

The more scholastically educated a man is generally, the more he is an emotional boor.

The voice of sin is loud, but the voice of forgiveness is louder.

I focus on the most important form of innumeracy in everyday life, statistical innumeracy--that is, the inability to reason about uncertainties and risk.

How can you work in film and still see the overt racism that exists in film and not just be furious all the time?

Listen, you listen to the work and you decide whether you want to support it. But don't ask me why I'm doing it, because I really do not know the answer.

If I were but a man who would be tall, I would be me.