You can’t kill history. You can’t shoot it with a bullet and watch it recede into whatever lies outside of memory. History is tougher than that—if it’s going to die, it has to die on its own

Love is a strange fact - it hopes all things, believes all things, endures all things. It makes no sense at all.

Sometimes heroism is nothing more than patience, curiosity, and a refusal to panic.

Fair is whatever God wants to do.

I remember it as October days are always remembered, cloudless, maple-flavored, the air gold and so clean it quivers.

Pride is the rope God allows us all.

It is one thing to be sick of your own infirmities and another to understand that the people you love most are sick of them also. You are very near then to being friendless in the world.

Is there a single person on whom I can press belief? No sir. All I can do is say, Here's how it went. Here's what I saw. I've been there and am going back. Make of it what you will.

You can embark on new and steeper versions of your old sins, you know, and cry tears while doing it that are genuine as any.

Hope is like yeast, you know, rising under warmth.

When a person dies, the earth is generally unwilling to cough him back up. A miracle contradicts the will of earth.

Only the very greatest art invigorates without consoling.

Patience is both the tool for and the result of, our efforts.

Psychology which explains everything, explains nothing.

Frankly, the reason I joined MENSA is because I was dating a guy at the time who spoke five languages and could solve a Rubik's Cube literally with his eyes closed because it's just an algorithm.

You do something wrong, you learn from it, you move on.

[As a conductor] there has to be, between me and the orchestra, an unshakable bond of trust, born out of mutual respect, through which we can spin a musical narrative that we all believe in.

And if you say a word about this over the radio, the next wings you see will belong to the flies buzzing over your rotting corpse.

Things will be very bad for Latin America. You only have to consider the ambitions and the doctrines of the empire, which regards this region as its backyard.

A guy I interviewed for Hard Times says, "What do I remember about the Great Depression? That I was hungry, that's all." Elemental things.

I always say that you can't be afraid to ask the question. What's the worst that could happen? The answer could be "no" and you go on.