To write is a humiliation.

A strong foe is better than a weak friend.

The ancients understood the regulation of power better than the regulation of liberty.

The Americans have always been food, sex, and spirit revivalists.

Writing is conscience, scruple, and the farming of our ancestors.

The machine has had a pernicious effect upon virtue, pity, and love, and young men used to machines which induce inertia, and fear, are near impotent.

When one realizes that his life is worthless he either commits suicide or travels.

Every decision you make is a mistake.

Always like to look on the optimistic side of life, but I am realistic enough to know that life is a complex matter. Walt Disney Every decision you make is a mistake.

What most men desire is a virgin who is a whore.

The bad poet is a toady mimicking nature.

Men are mad most of their lives; few live sane, fewer die so. The acts of people are baffling unless we realize that their wits are disordered. Man is driven to justice by his lunacy.

Man hoards himself when he has nothing to give away.

So much of our lives is given over to the consideration of our imperfections that there is no time to improve our imaginary virtues. The truth is we only perfect our vices, and man is a worse creature when he dies than he was when he was born.

Nothing in our times has become so unattractive as virtue.

Genius, like truth, has a shabby and neglected mien.

We can only write well about our sins because it is too difficult to recall a virtuous act or even whether it was the result of good or evil motives.

It takes a long time to understand nothing.

Ambition is a Dead Sea fruit, and the greatest peril to the soul is that one is likely to get precisely what he is seeking.

To write is a humiliation.

Herman Melville was as separated from a civilized literature as the lost Atlantis was said to have been from the great peoples of the earth.

We cannot live, suffer or die for somebody else, for suffering is too precious to be shared.

A man who can be entertaining for a full day will be in his grave by night fall.

I love to read. But I loved to read a lot longer than I started to love writing.

The man who buried Malcolm X - my Muslim imam, priest - he, after I got beat up by police... came to me, and he said, 'You don't need this American name.' And I was susceptible to it at the time because, God knows, I had just gotten whipped near to death. So he gave me an Arab name; he gave me the name Amir Barakat.

Positive defaults protect you from yourself - and that helps you to make decisions in the moment that are better for your long-term interests.

There's never been a particular band that I've followed religiously. But I do tend to listen to sadder music.

Everyone is always surprised by how old I am. They think I'm older, but it's always been that way. I'm the youngest of four - maybe you grow up quicker because you just watch the big people.

It is amazing how quickly the kids learn to drive a car yet are unable to understand the lawnmower snowblower or vacuum cleaner.

I like entertainment and think mastery is good, though I don't feel like a master. If a theme means having a story that's legible, then that's certainly what we do. But we don't treat design as an add-on layer.

There's little risk in becoming overly proud of one's garden because gardening by its very nature is humbling. It has a way of keeping you on your knees.

The idea of politics is just so uninteresting to me - I've never paid much attention to it. I don't believe things can really change. It doesn't matter who's president. Nothing really gets resolved. I don't know. I guess that's not the right attitude to take.

No one has a resume that they are 100% comfortable with, nor does anyone have a life that they are 100% comfortable with.

America has the laws and the material resources it takes to insure justice for all its people. What it lacks is the heart, the humanity, the Christian love that it would take.

I've seen lights in the sky, I've seen UFOs, I've even seen something on the ground that I can't explain, but I've never actually seen a being. I wish I had.

Countries are not like financial markets. Social change cannot be executed as swiftly as credit-default swaps. You cannot sell short on social commitments and practical responsibilities.

Happiness, in this world, is a means; in the next world it is the end.

I don't believe I've ever played a hip dude. I don't think I would have the wherewithal to do that.

I'm a believer in just open, free-form creativity, and you never know the surprises that life has in store, and that, purely on a creative level, there's no such thing as rules.

Our esteem for facts has not neutralized in us all religiousness. It is itself almost religious. Our scientific temper is devout.

In some ways, people forget about average working people, and how they live their lives.

Port Royal, Jamaica, was built for pirates. The town had a well-protected harbor, corrupt politicians and townsfolk, and a set of ethics that seemed passed down from Sodom and Gomorrah.

I value teaching. It's one of the places I get inspiration, engagement.

Through the Committee on Education and the Workforce, we need to ensure we are educating a future generation to achieve a workforce for the 21st century. I believe the best education solutions come from those closest to the students: state and local entities.

What I myself experience is indescribable gratitude in the face of God's perpetual and preemptive love, a love which is not contingent upon requital or even belief in His existence.

An invasion of armies can be resisted, but not an idea whose time has come.

Old men do it better. We're not so sensitive in certain areas.