Welfare is ... the victim of national compassion fatigue.

Let's just say that global warming deniers are now on a par with Holocaust deniers.

I have never been especially impressed by the heroics of people convinced they are about to change the world. I am more awed by those who struggle to make one small difference.

Most people do not consider dawn to be an attractive experience - unless they are still up.

Maybe this year, we ought to walk through the rooms of our lives not looking for flaws, but looking for potential.

The central struggle of parenthood is to let our hopes for our children outweigh our fears.

I regard this novel as a work without redeeming social value, unless it can be recycled as a cardboard box.

What he labels sexual, she labels harassment.

Today, much of journalism and politics are in a kind of collusion to oversimplify and personalize issues. No room for ambivalence. Plenty of room for the personal attack.

Ultimately, time is all you have and the idea isn't to save it, but to savour it.

Our 'mistakes' become our crucial parts, sometimes our best parts, of the lives we have made.

Laughter springs from the lawless part of our nature, and is purifying only in so far as there is a natural and unschooled goodness in the human heart.

What can we know? What are we all? Poor silly half-brained things peering out at the infinite, with the aspirations of angels and the instinct of beasts.

What I think a doctor should do is prevent disease, by any means necessary.

Leadership: The skill of influencing people to work enthusiastically toward goals identified as being for the common good.

Nothing comes of so many things, if you have patience.

I'm looking at the window and can't understand why there are six hundred thousand SUVs here in this little town. No one can even move. Why doesn't everyone just get out and walk?

I live a life that most girls only dream of.

Once you duct-tape a Ziploc bag to a man's chest, there's no going back.

The relationship of the United States with Mexico is a matter for the United States and Mexico.

Chess is a sad waste of brains.