Wit and puns aren't just décor in the mind; they're essential signs that the mind knows it's on, recognizes its own software, can spot the bugs in its own program.

After all, spinning is its own reward. There wouldn't be carousels if it weren't so.

The scale and the brutality of our prisons are the moral scandal of American life.

We breathe in our first language, and swim in our second.

The special virtue of freedom is not that it makes you richer and more powerful but that it gives you more time to understand what it means to be alive.

The loneliness of the expatriate is of an odd and complicated kind, for it is inseparable from the feeling of being free, of having escaped.

Frauds master our minds; magicians, like poets and lovers, engage them in a permanent maze of possibilities.

What drives innovation is abundance and ease, not the pressure of scarcity.

Sometimes having a good time can be the outward evidence of a deep re-thinking.

Fanaticism comes in as many flavors as there are human beings.

Over all, there are now more people under “correctional supervision” in America-more than six million-than were in the Gulag Archipelago under Stalin at its height.

Books are the best companions. They talk to you when you want them and they stop when you want them…They ask no questions, and want no favours.

I had never imagined that happiness could hurt so much.

Today I know that there is still work to be done, but along the way my I am achieving my dreams.

Nobody speaks the truth when there is something they must have.

How you spend your days is how you spend your life.

My father started me singing in church.

Gods' payment is the best payment.

Whenever you preach, be sure that you lift the Saviour high and lay the sinner low.

Wisdom comes only with innocence.

I wish I could help you" I whisper. You are," he murmurs against my knee. "just dont leave me, okay? Everyone leaves me.