Don't spend a lot of time imagining the worst-case scenario. It rarely goes down as you imagine it will, and if by some fluke it does, you will have lived it twice.

The more I expect, the more unhappy I am going to be. The more I accept, the more serene I am.

Zoos are becoming facsimiles - or perhaps caricatures - of how animals once were in their natural habitat. If the right policies toward nature were pursued, we would need no zoos at all.

Acceptance doesn't mean resignation; it means understanding that something is what it is and that there's got to be a way through it.

I am careful not to confuse excellence with perfection. Excellence I can reach for; perfection is God's business.

Our challenges don’t define us, our actions do.

If you fixate on the worst-case scenario and it actually happens, you’ve lived it twice.

Family is not an important thing. It's everything.

I like to encourage people to realize that any action is a good action if it's proactive and there is positive intent behind it.

One's dignity may be assaulted, vandalized and cruelly mocked, but cannot be taken away unless it is surrendered.

Medical science has proven time and again that when the resources are provided, great progress in the treatment, cure, and prevention of disease can occur.

It has been said of dreams that they are a 'controlled psychosis, ' or, put another way, a psychosis is a dream breaking through during waking hours.

Are you in pain?' I asked, because I know that everything in the world that matters shows up as some kind of pain. Or pang. Joy included.

Forethought spares afterthought.

Muhammad is more human, more self-doubting, even self-tortured at times. His story is full of adventure, intrigue, betrayal.

If you loved, sooner or later you always lost; that was the penalty you had to pay for loving. Grief can be endured - somehow. But how poor and bare would be a life which had nothing to grieve over!

Great witch, tough woman.

I am always trying to write.

I really believe that the past is beyond our grasp and what is essential about the past is something unspeakable.

Education is our passport to the future.

Bad faith makes the most of every ambiguity.