Every writing teacher gives the subliminal message, every time they teach: 'Your life counts for something.' In no other subject that I know of is that message given.

Children love to be alone because alone is where they know themselves, and where they dream.

The problem with death is absence

The God worth worshipping is the one who pays us the compliment of self - regulation, and we might return it by minding our own business.

A library should be like a pair of open arms.

Slum kids die slowly, their lives eroded at so languid a pace that even they would have trouble tracing the disintegration. To the children of war death explodes like a car bomb.

If you need three adjectives to describe something, then you've probably chosen the wrong something.

The only reason I wanted 'Making Toast' as the title is that it is a simple gesture of moving on. Every morning there's the bread and you make the toast and you start the day.

Friends are lights in winter; the older the friend, the brighter the light.

The belief in potential human virtue underlies the whole idea of the Bill of Rights; the document is a very tough guardian of that belief.

Only by moving in the direction you least trust can you be saved

Engage in no pursuit in which you cannot look up unto God, and say, 'Bless me in this, my Father!

It took me awhile to learn the rules. OK, it took the librarian in me weeks of careful obsessive research to learn the rules. There was a label maker involved. I'd rather not go into it.

I try to take life as it comes, and just hope it keeps coming.

Since the end of the Cold War, Soviet aggression had been replaced by a number of particularly venomous threats, from Timothy McVeigh to Osama bin Laden.

I think [Sacrifice of Isaac] is the most important event in the Bible except for Sinai.

Really, he called me that? Ellen DeGenerate? I've been getting that since fourth grade. I guess I'm happy I could give him work.

I think my grandmother saw my potential first. When I was young, I told her, 'I think I should get a job.' She said, 'No, just keep boxing.'

If investing is entertaining, if you're having fun, you're probably not making any money. Good investing is boring.

The screenplay is a great document because it makes you have many discussions prior to actually being on the floor.

Human creativity uses what is already existing and available and changes it in unpredictable ways.