Part of America's genius has always been its ability to absorb newcomers, to forge a national identity out of the disparate lot that arrived on our shores.

You can’t let your failures define you. You have to let your failures teach you.

Change will not come if we wait for some other person or some other time. We are the ones we've been waiting for. We are the change that we seek.

Keep exploring. Keep dreaming. Keep asking why. Don’t settle for what you already know. Never stop believing in the power of your ideas, your imagination, your hard work to change the world.

When ignorant folks want to advertise their ignorance, you don't really have to do anything, you just let them talk.

Just because we have the best hammer does not mean that every problem is a nail.

Change is never easy, but always possible.

Don’t ever let anybody tell you that your efforts don’t matter or that your voice doesn’t count. Don’t ever believe that you can’t make a difference. You have.

Where you are right now doesn't have to determine where you'll end up.

Learning to stand in somebody else's shoes, to see through their eyes, that's how peace begins. And it's up to you to make that happen. Empathy is a quality of character that can change the world.

If somebody is different from you, that's not something you criticize, that's something that you appreciate.

You can’t be beaten by something you laugh at.

Whenever you have a problem, take a few minutes to meditate. You’ll be amazed at the renewed clarity that you’ll bring to the issue.

Don't say I didn't warn you. One of these days you're going to take in a stray that'll really break your heart.”~Ed

Each word bears its weight, so you have to read my poems quite slowly.

As long as there will be a man, there will be wars.

Remember that sign they hung up in an EPA office during the Reagan administration, "No good deed goes unpunished"? Under George Bush, no good science goes unpunished.

The American Dream never really existed. It was a marketing scam.

I love art and I think I was destined to end up in some aspect of the arts.

I like being able to fire people.

With an inexperienced director, a lot of times the days go on to 14, 15, 16 hours. It goes horrendously overtime. And because of the lack of money, they just keep you there, regardless of the hours.