Political corruption is to Rhode Islanders as smog is to people who live in Los Angeles: nobody complains of its absence, but when it rolls around everyone feels right at home.

Denouncing evil is a far cry from doing good.

The photographs of one dead terrorist mastermind carry no real news or information about the nature or horror of war. They just create sensation instead of deeper understanding.

What distinguishes genocide from murder, and even from acts of political murder that claim as many victims, is the intent. The crime is wanting to make a people extinct. The idea is the crime.

Genocide, after all, is an exercise in community building.

This is what fascinates me most in existence: the peculiar necessity of imagining what is, in fact, real.

I couldn't help thinking how well Cain had prospered after killing his brother: he founded the first city--and, although we don't like to talk about it all that much, we are all his children.

Oh no. Don't smile. You'll kill me. I stop breathing when you smile.

Teachers believe they have a gift for giving it drives them with the same irrepressible drive that drives others to create a work of art or a market or a building.

My parents never understood me; they were Japanese.

I thought, I hate the thought of a 12, 13 or 14 year-old girl seeing a picture of me and thinking she'll do what I did.

The stars I have worked with not only look good in my clothes, but they also embody a spirit of dedication and hard work that I relate to and admire.

Democracy cannot long survive when the people permit their lives to be dominated - economically or politically - by a powerful few.

People don't die of old age, they die of neglect.

I have always felt that no matter how inscrutable its ways and means, the universe is working perfectly and working according to a greater plan than we can know.

I find myself, at this time in my life, no less challenged, no less plagued, no less intrigued by what I still don't know.

Wealth is so concentrated that a large segment of society is virtually unaware of its existence.