Whenever a toddler sees a pile of blocks, he wants to tear it down.

There isn't any way for the people of Nicaragua to find out what's going on in Nicaragua.

I consider myself a bassist first.

Like all forms of collective security, multilateral sanctions require a unanimity rarely achieved in international politics.

We used to have more references to things that we pulled out because they almost felt like they were trying too hard to allude to something.

We are human, and nothing is more interesting to us than humanity.

If you are in a bad relationship with anyone else, it is because you are in a bad relationship with yourself.

It's amazing how, age after age, in country after country, and in all languages, Shakespeare emerges as incomparable.

I try to push ideas away, and the ones that will not leave me alone are the ones that ultimately end up happening.

Mystery is more important than knowledge.

The theories of the major philosophers of the 18th century secular enlightenment were biblical and theological in spite of themselves.

He turned to face the long, shadowy hall. There was no turning back now. Unless, of course, he decided to turn back.

Have you killed a man, drowned a crocodile, hunted a wolf, or raped an abuser? Stop pretending you love someone.

God afflicts us because he loves us; and it is very pleasing to him, when in our afflictions he sees us abandon ourselves to his paternal care.

The only school that let me in was U.C. Santa Cruz, which is where I went. They didn't have a journalism program, so I took sociology, which is the closest thing to journalism.

Fortune makes a fool of those she favors too much.

People are so funny. There's no winning with commenters or anonymous people. They'd be rude that I was overweight, and now they're rude that I'm healthy.

Women are all so far Machiavellians that they are never either good or bad by halves; their passions are too strong, and their reason too weak, to do anything with moderation.

I'm not a pop act, churning stuff out really quickly. I find the music that arises from that style of working is distracted, not particularly profound.

Say, did you read what this writer just dug up in George Washington's diary? I was so ashamed I sat up all night reading it.

There is no more reason to believe that man descended from an inferior animal than there is to believe that a stately mansion has descended from a small cottage.