I will say the most raw joy I've experienced reading has probably come from the times I've been reading with my little boys.

When we are children we seldom think of the future. This innocence leaves us free to enjoy ourselves as few adults can. The day we fret about the future is the day we leave our childhood behind.

Words are pale shadows of forgotten names. As names have power, words have power. Words can light fires in the minds of men. Words can wring tears from the hardest hearts.

I have, of course, been called many other things. Most of them uncouth, although very few were unearned

The world is a mess and I just need to rule it.

Half of seeming clever is keeping your mouth shut at the right times.

It's like everyone tells a story about themselves inside their own head. Always. All the time. That story makes you what you are. We build ourselves out of that story.

It was wise enough to know itself, and brave enough to be itself, and wild enough to change itself while somehow staying altogether true.

If I seem to wander, if I seem to stray, remember that true stories seldom take the straightest way

There are three things all wise men fear: the sea in storm, a night with no moon, and the anger of a gentle man.

Do not mistake me for my mask. You see light dappling on the water and forget the deep, cold dark beneath.

When you are mad, mad like this, you don't know it. Reality is what you see. When what you see shifts, departing from anyone else's reality, it's still reality to you.

The moment is a gracious gift.

A Buddha is someone who finds freedom in good fortune and bad.

There is nothing in human affairs that is a true subject for ridicule. Beneath comedy lies the ferment of tragedy

Human nature, if it changes at all, changes not much faster than the geological face of the earth.

The reason the Road Hole at St. Andrews is the most difficult par 4 in the world is that it was designed as a par 6.

I'm so proud to have work in this movie, "Brokeback Mountain," a movie that once again shows us that love is what makes us all very similar in spite that we can be so different, too.

Avoiding the appearance of queenly behavior is politically wise. But it does American culture no favors if a first lady tries so hard to be average that she winds up looking common.

Peace, that glorious moment in time when everyone stops and reloads.

A victory is twice itself when the achiever brings home full numbers.