My grandparents, like many genocide survivors, took most of their stories to their graves.

Food is a gift and should be treated reverentially--romanced and ritualized and seasoned with memory.

With age comes acumen. With experience comes insight.

Life is filled with small moments that seem prosaic until one has the distance to look back and see the chain of large moments they unleashed.

Lie. Put down on paper the most interesting lies you can imagine. . .and then make them plausible.

But it's funny how the memory works and how sometimes we just belive whatever we want.

He defined himself almost wholly in the negative: It was not who he was, it was who he was not.

And though some days it is very hard, I try not to live for the future. And I try not to dream of the past.

He recalls what that first German soldier said to his major: No God-not yours or mine-approves of what you're doing.

The reality is that most of North America knows next to nothing of the 20th centurys first genocide - the systematic slaughter of 1.5 million Armenians in the First World War.

We may talk a good game and write even better ones, but we never outgrow those small wounded things we were when we were five and six and seven.

Why go with wrong, when right is an option?

How did I get to be a grown-up? At times, I find myself still sitting on the hillside, plotting revenge against the adult world.

You don't have to be brilliant, only a little bit wiser than the other guys, on average, for a long, long, time.

What's the function of poetry? It's to express general truths, to connect with the reader and make him think: 'Wow, I've experienced that, but you've expressed it so much better.'

Why can’t I drink the potion instead?” asked Harry desperately. “Because I am much older, much cleverer, and much less valuable,” said Dumbledore.

In particular, I found praying very disturbing, like swimming with bricks tied to your feet. And yet I was drawn to it constantly.

We pacifists have not ceased to point to the grave danger of armaments and to insist on their curtailment.

If youd asked me after Band of Brothers what thing I wanted to do next, I certainly never would have imagined Southland.

I've begun to think that we sit far more than we're supposed to...Why else would we have feet?

Obviously it always takes longer to finish an album than you think it will. That's always going to be the case. Everything takes longer than you think it will. Occasionally things happen fast.