I don't know exactly why the notion of homeownership has such a grasp on the American imagination. Perhaps as descendants of landless immigrants we turn our plots into symbols of stability.

Let's just say that global warming deniers are now on a par with Holocaust deniers.

I have never been especially impressed by the heroics of people convinced they are about to change the world. I am more awed by those who struggle to make one small difference.

Most people do not consider dawn to be an attractive experience - unless they are still up.

Maybe this year, we ought to walk through the rooms of our lives not looking for flaws, but looking for potential.

The central struggle of parenthood is to let our hopes for our children outweigh our fears.

I regard this novel as a work without redeeming social value, unless it can be recycled as a cardboard box.

What he labels sexual, she labels harassment.

Today, much of journalism and politics are in a kind of collusion to oversimplify and personalize issues. No room for ambivalence. Plenty of room for the personal attack.

Ultimately, time is all you have and the idea isn't to save it, but to savour it.

Our 'mistakes' become our crucial parts, sometimes our best parts, of the lives we have made.

Efficiency was a higher priority than imagination.

Gathering your own reference materials, sketches and using your own imagination is going to help you grow as an artist far more than stealing someone else's work.

But ghosts aren't white and bright. Ghosts are shadows of someone or something gone wrong.

There's no place for someone who can't decide between being one or the other.

If you assume that the new - and simply because it's new - is always to be better than the old, chances are you've never known anything valuable.

The reality is that no one can be forced to join a union against their will, and a union cannot take action against those who decide not to join their union.

The most fun characters to work with are characters that are complicated.

If it were up to the executives, they probably wouldn't have directors at all.

The food system is a very complex beast. There are people who are going to get their food at Wal-Mart or at Safeway; they're not going to the farmers' market. Those people need choices too.

I do not teach. I relate.