Our country is the only one that truly permits you to speak bad of your country, so you really shouldn’t say anything bad about it.

Facts, like living things, have a value in and of themselves and demand respect. Yet some people use them as means to an end, and dismiss them as soon as they are done using them.

True ideas seem to suffer from repetition, while stupid ones tend to flourish.

A thousand truths can be assembled in such a way as to create a colossal lie.

As time and space are bent by gravity, so too is truth bent by power.

You may never live long enough to discover who you are, but by the time you reach middle age you will hopefully realize who you are not.

Technology has not made humanity any wiser, it has only made us more dangerous.

Sometimes you come to realize you understand something but you can’t explain it to anyone, not even yourself. This is perhaps the most sacred kind of understanding.

There is no greater thing than to be oneself, and it is never too late to do so.

Where there is hope there is life.

Death is the night sky, the background against which the fleeting fireworks of life are displayed, an empty stage upon which the drama of life is played.

Those things that are not within your control can often be the very things that set you free.

But if ever I try to mend, some other bodies would instantly break, would instantly be fragments.

The bent head, the averted eye, the faltering voice, the wincing figure- these, and not the unshrinking gaze and frank reply, are the true signals of passion.

The Word frees us from smallness of mind (1 Kings 4:29) and from threatening confinements (Psalm 18:19).

You can only fit so many words in a postcard, only so many in a phone call, only so many into space before you forget that words are sometimes used for things other than filling emptiness.

Love is active, not passive. It is our love for one another, for Mother Earth, for our fellow creatures that compels us to act on their behalf.

I appreciate the beauty and balm of flowers but I have never enjoyed receiving them because then I have to watch them die, and worse...throw them away.

In 1994, I started touring again and I recorded two albums for Chesky Jazz.

I am an isolationist.

I am dreading the publication, for it will be impossible not to mind what is said. I have exposed my heart to be shot at.