If you overpower your enemy, then pardon him by way of thankfulness to Allah, for being able to subdue him.

An optimist stays up until midnight to see the new year in. A pessimist stays up to make sure the old year leaves.

We hope that, when the insects take over the world, they will remember with gratitude how we took them along on all our picnics.

The eagle may soar; beavers build dams.

The US has not imposed democracy in Yemen, its people have.

The whale is endangered, while the ant continues to do just fine.

Even pearls are dark before the whiteness of his teeth.

Money won't buy happiness, but it will pay the salaries of a large research staff to study the problem.

Youth is when you're allowed to stay up late on New Year's Eve. Middle age is when you're forced to.

Now that women are jockeys, baseball umpires, atomic scientists, and business executives, maybe someday they can master parallel parking.

The government is shutting down the coal industry, they say it's cheaper to draw nuclear power off the French grid and cheaper to buy coal from Colombia.

Life is an enduring faith.

Penetrating so many secrets we cease to believe in the unknowable. But there it sits nevertheless calmly licking its chops.

There is no substitute for American leadership and exceptionalism.

The idea of goodies and baddies has always fascinated me, and what people consider to be a goodie or a baddie, because I've never seen any of my characters as baddies.

Hedda's Hopper attitude was 'once a Commie, always a Commie.'

There are various ways you might define the common good, but that would be one way you could do it.

Most of the pack would rather have Darryl mad at them than Auriele.

I'd rather lose an argument than get into a long discussion in order to win it.

I think the darker aspect of my fiction-or anybody's fiction-is by its very nature somehow easier to talk about.

The United States remains deeply concerned that, to date, no individuals have been convicted for the 1999 killings of U.S. citizens Agron, Ylli, and Mehmet Bytyqi.