Joy doesn't betray but sustains activism. And when you face a politics that aspires to make you fearful, alienated and isolated, joy is a fine initial act of insurrection.

There is no one as dangerous as he or she who has nothing to lose.

Leave the door open for the unknown, the door into the dark. That’s where the most important things come from, where you yourself came from, and where you will go.

A book is a heart that only beats in the chest of another.

To be hopeful means to be uncertain about the future, to be tender toward possibilities, to be dedicated to change all the way down to the bottom of your heart.

Worry is a way to pretend that you have knowledge or control over what you don't--and it surprises me, even in myself, how much we prefer ugly scenarios to the pure unknown.

Politics is pervasive. Everything is political and the choice to be "apolitical" is usually just an endorsement of the status quo and the unexamined life.

Memory, even in the rest of us, is a shifting, fading, partial thing, a net that doesn't catch all the fish by any means and sometimes catches butterflies that don't exist.

Every minute of every hour of every day you are making the world, just as you are making yourself, and you might as well do it with generosity and kindness and style.

Revolution is as unpredictable as an earthquake and as beautiful as spring. Its coming is always a surprise, but its nature should not be.

I walk wherever my errands take me.

No time to spare: the expression assumed its full significance, as so many expressions do in wartime.

Lee was too cool by nature to rage at fate

When you stop talking you've lost your customer.

The more perfect a thing is, the more susceptible to good and bad treatment it is.

Start marching forward, even when into the new and unknown, and don't be deterred by obstacles.

Entire generations of Americans have come of age since the ancient time when the president's power was constrained by a duty of candor to the American people.

I hear you. I just don't believe a word you say.

We don't have mad cow disease. We probably never will have mad cow disease, and therefore, it's a non-problem in the United States.

Politics is no exact science.

Don't mistake routine for commitment, just showing up is not enough.