There's no way to resolve Syria without Iran being involved, given its financing of Assad and the fact that Hezbollah is probably the most effective fighting force that Assad can count on.

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.

It's no wonder that truth is stranger than fiction. Fiction has to make sense.

At that time I was only twenty-four years old. My life then was already gloomy, disorderly, and solitary to the point of savagery.

I feel like contemporary art is everywhere now and with the rise of the internet, it's so much easier to see what artists are doing and to follow their careers.

Even when we have physical hardships, we can be very happy.

Sound is often talked about in a very subjective way, as if it had a colour. This is a bright sound, this is a dark sound. I don't believe in that because I think that is much too subjective.

We had everything to say to each other, but no ways to say it

When I heard him speak at the DNC [in 2004] I started supporting him. Then I endorsed him on the anniversary of my father's assassination this year. So I am a diehard [Barack] Obama supporter.

We should not wonder at the success of communism, for so much of its success is rather that of religion.

Make an effort to serve good bread and good meat and not to sell the better wine so as to serve what is inferior.

I'll break my staff, bury it certain fathoms in the earth, and deeper than did ever plummet sound, I'll drown my book!