At a time when politics deals in distortions and half truths, truth is to be found in the liberal arts. There's something afoot in this country and you are very much a part of it.

Memory blurs, that's the point. If memory didn't blur you wouldn't have the fool's courage to do things again, again, again, that tear you apart.

Reading is the sole means by which we slip, involuntarily, often helplessly, into another's skin, another's voice, another's soul.

I never change, I simply become more myself.

How lovely this world is, really: one simply has to look.

Our enemy is by tradition our savior, in preventing us from superficiality.

Read widely, and without apology. Read what you want to read, not what someone tells you you should read.

Night comes to the desert all at once, as if someone turned off the light.

Keep a light, hopeful heart. But ­expect the worst.

See, people come into your life for a reason. They might not know it themselves, why. You might not know it. But there's a reason. There has to be

Be your own editor/critic. Sympathetic but merciless!

I want in your life, Elle. All the way in.

Friendship is not a national affair

Hatred needs scorn. Scorn is hatred's nectar!

We are already too dependent on gambling revenue. If we continue, we will soon be owned by them.

I know the struggles that are ahead in my life and I know the struggles that are ahead in your life. It's not going to be pretty.

We need to conceive of ourselves as "agents" impelled by self-generated intentions.

The distance between a gene and a behavior is of greatest interest to me. The relative contributions of nature and nurture, of nucleotide and nuclear family, are perpetually fascinating to me.

Any kind of restrictions put on free speech would have worse consequences than bullying.

Every single one of the guys that I've written songs about has been tracked down on MySpace by my fans.

We need not borrow and take up sorrows upon use of the morrow, to make up our present load; as we read of daily bread, so of a daily cross, Luke ix. M, which we are bid to take, not to make.