Optimism inspires, energizes, and brings out our best. It points the mind toward possibilities and helps us think creatively past problems.

If you're experiencing no anxiety or discomfort, the risk you're taking probably isn't worthy of you. The only risks that aren't a little scary are the ones you've outgrown.

Most people confuse wishing and wanting with pursuing. You must place your trust in action.

No sense being pessimistic. Wouldn't work anyway.

Too much attention on problems kills our faith in possibilities.

If you must doubt something, doubt your limits.

Your ethical muscle grows stronger every time you choose right over wrong.

Excellence calls for character . . . integrity . . . fairness . . . honesty . . . a determination to do what's right. High ethical standards, across the board.

So let your deepest desires direct your aim. Set your sights far above the 'reasonable' target. The power of purpose is profound only if you have a desire that stirs the heart.

We can't win the struggle for high standards if we just talk a good game . . . we've got to play a good game.

Trust is the glue that holds relationships together.

He went to hell and back, to shut the door of his past, he would not let that door be opened again by others.

[Camila] was quite incapable of establishing any harmony between the claims of her art, of her appetites, or her dreams, and of her crowded daily routine. Each of these was a world in itself.

Old things are always in good repute, present things in disfavor.

Who ever said the world was fair?

Culture civilizes us, and that's why every single despotic regime has tried to smash [the arts].

Photographs are detonators. They explode in us. We are the gaze as well as the gazed-at. The observer and the observed.

In the United States, there hasn't been much legislative change on the surveillance issue, although there are some tepid proposals.

Lenity will operate with greater force, in some instances, than rigor. It is, therefore, my first wish, to have my whole conduct distinguished by it.

But it can be laid down as a rule that those who speak most of liberty are least inclined to use it.

Like all of my fictions, 'Sinner' is a mirror. Look into it and you will find yourself. What you do with what you see is your choice.