I have lunch, flirt with some local grandmothers, undercut my flirting by crotching myself on the corner of a table as I leave. -- "The Great Divider

I tend to foster drama via bleakness. If I want the reader to feel sympathy for a character, I cleave the character in half, on his birthday. And then it starts raining. And he's made of sugar.

What I regret most in my life are failures of kindness.

What I regret most in my life are failures of kindness. Those moments when another human being was there, in front of me, suffering, and I responded . . . sensibly. Reservedly. Mildly.

Do those things that incline you toward the big questions, and avoid the things that would reduce you and make you trivial.

Developing our sympathetic compassion is not only possible but the only reason for us to be here on earth.

According to me, your life is going to be a gradual process of becoming kinder and more loving. Hurry up. Speed it along. Start right now.

It's a big world, and I really like it.

Character is that sum total of moments we can't explain.

The generalizing writer is like the passionate drunk, stumbling into your house mumbling: I know I'm not being clear, exactly, but don't you kind of feel what I'm feeling?

Kindness, it turns out, is hard - it starts out all rainbows and puppy dogs, and expands to include . . . well, EVERYTHING.

Don't tell your friend you are fighting with your wife, it gives him pleasure

Inexperience can be overcome, ignorance can be enlightened, but prejudice will destroy you.

There are three species of government: republican, monarchical, and despotic.

I think anybody who is honestly struggling against racism must struggle against imperialism and vice versa.

The world you experience, every day and night of your life, is transient. They only last for the blink of an eye, and then they dissolve back into that unknowable and formless eternity.

If my life be spared, nothing shall stop me short of visiting every nation of Indians on the Continent of North America.

I cover media people the way they cover politicians.

Nobody wants a prediction that the future will be more or less like the present, even if that is, statistically speaking, an excellent prediction.

In popular books and articles, information technology writer Carr has worried over the ways that algorithms like those employed by Google are reshaping the ways we think.

Our approach is very much profiting from lack of change rather than from change.