Worry is a way to pretend that you have knowledge or control over what you don't--and it surprises me, even in myself, how much we prefer ugly scenarios to the pure unknown.

There is no one as dangerous as he or she who has nothing to lose.

Leave the door open for the unknown, the door into the dark. That’s where the most important things come from, where you yourself came from, and where you will go.

A book is a heart that only beats in the chest of another.

To be hopeful means to be uncertain about the future, to be tender toward possibilities, to be dedicated to change all the way down to the bottom of your heart.

Joy doesn't betray but sustains activism. And when you face a politics that aspires to make you fearful, alienated and isolated, joy is a fine initial act of insurrection.

Politics is pervasive. Everything is political and the choice to be "apolitical" is usually just an endorsement of the status quo and the unexamined life.

Memory, even in the rest of us, is a shifting, fading, partial thing, a net that doesn't catch all the fish by any means and sometimes catches butterflies that don't exist.

Every minute of every hour of every day you are making the world, just as you are making yourself, and you might as well do it with generosity and kindness and style.

Revolution is as unpredictable as an earthquake and as beautiful as spring. Its coming is always a surprise, but its nature should not be.

I walk wherever my errands take me.

The most important decision we make is whether to be honestly fake or fake honesty.

Playing Solitaire is a non-smoking employee’s smoke break.

Ruthlessness is the most practical of emotions, Reen's voice whispered. She ignored it.

The Bowery station on the J line is what happens to a neighborhood once politicians realize the people who live there don't vote.

Science fiction has a way of letting you talk about where we are in the world and letting you be a bit of a pop philosopher without being didactic.

There are two ways of getting home; and one of them is to stay there.

The hitter asks the owner to give him a big raise so he can go somewhere he's never been, and the owner says "You mean third base?"

I can see that in retrospect but I guess I've always had such an identity crisis when it comes to other people's understanding of me.

I want them to believe I have a vision for the state of New Jersey.

If you find yourself in some difficulty, step aside, and allow Buddha to take your place. The Buddha is in you.