Boxing is rough. Even if you win, you get hurt.

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!

The weariest night the longest day sooner or later must perforce come to an end.

How easy it was to fall in love with every moment of her existence!

In the modern operas that 'Miss Saigon' and 'Les Miz' are, nobody breaks out into song from conventional book dialogue. Everything is sung from beginning to end, including the recitative.

Innocence is not pure so much as pleased, Always expectant, bright-eyed, self-enclosed

I realized that if I wanted to truly talk about vastness and the sublime and scale and the West - recurrent themes in my overall work - I needed to engage with the vast ocean that is Los Angeles.

The trend of offering individualized education plans, curricula, and lessons is going to help students tremendously. “Teaching to the middle” is one of the saddest concepts I've ever heard about.

We crave, we deeply yearn for, release from the limitations of a dogma that declares separation, disunity, and judgment to be the essential condition of life.

I think the environmental impact of this disaster is likely to have been very, very modest.

It certainly would be possible for America to redefine its role in the world, especially if, in the short run, America is able to cope effectively with the ongoing dilemma in the Middle East.