Cynic: an idealist whose rose-colored glasses have been removed, snapped in two and stomped into the ground, immediately improving his vision

Math anxiety: an intense lifelong fear of two trains approaching each other at speeds of 60 and 80 MPH.

REVOLUTIONARY: An oppressed person waiting for the opportunity to become an oppressor.

Communism: Liberation of the people from the burdens of liberty

CHILDHOOD: The rapidly shrinking interval between infancy and first arrest on a drug or weapons charge.

The world belongs to people with IQs of 120. Anything much greater or less amounts to a liability.

We're still just the world's premium brand of ape.

Most people perceive moderates as timid, middle-of-the-roaders, who can't take a stand.

His pupils dilate when he sees me. His lips part as he momentarily forgets to marshal his expression, and I could swear he stops breathing for several heartbeats.

The gift of loneliness is sometimes a radical vision of society or one's people that has not previously been taken into account.

By all means examine the games of the great chess players, but don't swallow them whole. Their games are valuable not for their separate moves, but for their vision of chess, their way of thinking.

Those who call the shots are never in the line of fire.

The wise man knows of all things, as far as possible, although he has no knowledge of each of them in detail

We have more people in jail than any other country in Earth, disproportionately Latino and African-American.

No one can tell you what your life is goin to be, can they? No. It's never like what you expected. Quijada nodded. If people knew the story of their lives how many would then elect to live them?

Veganism gives people an actual chance to DO SOMETHING instead of adding more cement (good intentions) to pave that road to Hell.

To be a poet is to have an appetite for a certain anxiety which, when tasted among the swirling sum of things existent or forfeit, causes, as the taste dies, joy.

The scenery was very beautiful. But I did not see The Great Wall [of China].