The difference between an optimist and a pessimist? An optimist laughs to forget, but a pessimist forgets to laugh.

In school, you're taught a lesson and then given a test. In life, you're given a test that teaches you a lesson.

They say a person needs just three things to be truly happy in this world: someone to love, something to do, and something to hope for.

I come from very common stock, and I've always been uncomfortable with pretension and all the forms it can take, including disingenuous broadcasting.

You can make a new friend but you can't make an old one.

That's what the American odyssey is really about: Leaving home. Leaving home and coming home, and trying to understand the difference.

In the America I see from here, anything is possible - especially the impossible.

Mine is not a story to tell struggling writers.

Americans are generally very self-sufficient and I think generally averse to pretension, just as I am.

Professor Al Drake encouraged me to just write the way I talk. I decided if that's what I needed to do, I didn't need to be in school to do it.

Like most Alaska immigrants, my roots continue to petition for equal time.

We have earned our peace. It is, by now, more precious than honor, or even pity.

If you can bow in front of the justice at the height of your power, it means that you are really a just person!

Keep out of this, " Lucian said. "I'm not smiting anybody.""You're showing mercy." Catch-a-Tick nodded. "That's heroic, too. But not as good as smiting.

Friends provoked become the bitterest of enemies.

I feel comfortable with what I do and I guess that my girlfriend feels the same.

Love means giving something you don't have to someone who doesn't want it.

The press should be the voice of the people, not of party.

Tina Fey is part of a generation of women who have changed the face of comedy at 'Second City,' 'SNL,' in sitcoms and in film.

I have a problem with procrastination. I have a great deal of difficulty deciding what to wear. It's a woman thing.

The unexamined life may not be worth living, but the life too closely examined may not be lived at all.