And despite the clamors and the violence, we tried to preserve in our hearts the memory of a happy sea, of a remembered hill, the smile of a beloved face.

To create today is to create dangerously. Any publication is an act, and that act exposes one to the passions of an age that forgives nothing.

It is a great deal to fight while despising war, to accept losing everything while still preferring happiness, to face destruction while cherishing the idea of a higher civilization.

In raining bullets on those silent faces, already turned away from this world, you think you are disfiguring the face of our truth.

For all those landscapes, those flowers and those plowed fields, the oldest of lands, show you every spring that there are things you cannot choke in blood.

If you die in an elevator, be sure to push the up button.

Survival of the generic.

No one can escape stress, but you can learn to cope with it. Practice positive thinking. . . seize control in small ways.

What we truly and earnestly aspire to be, that in some sense we are.

I'm comfortable with how I lived my life as the president.

A man must have a battle to fight, a great mission to his life that involves and yet transcends even home and family.

I don't always trust my own instincts. It would be nice if someone else would tell me what I should do with my life!

I'm an atheist, a devout atheist, but I find religion fascinating. Primarily because of cultural references, as in: This is what we grew up with. Both on a personal level and a collective level.

We are the miracle of force and matter making itself over into imagination and will.

He who wins a thousand common hearts is entitled to some renown; but he who keeps undisputed sway over the heart of a coquette is indeed a hero.