Local color has a fatal tendency to remain local; but it is also true that the universal often borders on the void.

Only the middle-aged have all their five senses in the keeping of their wits.

Here the Frenchman, Spaniard, and Englishman all passed, leaving each his legend; and a brilliant and more or less feudal civilization with its aristocracy and slaves has departed with the economic system upon which it rested.

Local color has a fatal tendency to remain local; but it is also true that the universal often borders on the void.

In a continent but recently settled, many parts of which have as yet little historical or cultural background, the material for this volume has been gathered from a section that was one of the first to be colonized.

Each new generation is a fresh invasion of savages.

Legends are material to be moulded, and not facts to be recorded.

Religions change beer and wine remain.

The sum which two married people owe to one another defies calculation. It is an infinite debt, which can only be discharged through eternity.

The poet is a madman lost in adventure.

No family is perfect. We argue, we fight. We even stop talking to each other at times. But in the end, family is family. The love will always be there.

I live by fallacy. 'If I get enough nice Ikea furniture, I'll be a grown-up.' Then I catch myself. Or, 'If I get off by myself, away from the stress of modern life, I'll be OK.' Then I catch myself.

We can write the book on how to run a successful write-in campaign for the United States Senate.

Every time you ride, your either teaching or un-teaching your horse.

The Palestinian national movement is not an Islamic religious movement.

The production team's first meeting took place at my house. I had ideas and a color scheme in mind, how I wanted the movie to look, because that has to be a real collaboration.

There has certainly been criticism of the timing involved in getting help to the victims of the storm, and much of it may indeed be warranted. However, this is not the time for pointing fingers; rather, it is the time for offering a helping hand to our neighbors in need.

When you establish peace, when you establish love, when you establish kindness here [inside], you cannot act any other way to the outside world.

I think the story is my form.

Criticism does not make you smarter or better than the one you are criticizing. In fact, the stuff you are critical of in others is the same stuff you don't like about yourself.

Water is the driving force of all nature.

There's plenty to read about keeping your sanity while raising children, but it's all common-sense stuff about task division and taking breaks and the relentlessly repeated magic of date night with your spouse. What's missing is some 'tude.

Not a single creature on earth has more or less right to be here.

The intelligence community does not have complete 'eyes on' the totality of the Iranian nuclear program, nor can it guarantee that we have identified all of Iran's nuclear facilities and processes.

When you have an acoustic bass in the ensemble it really changes the dynamic of the record because it kind of forces everybody to play with a greater degree of sensitivity and nuance because it just has a different kind of tone and spectrum than the electric bass.

I'm not a xenophobe - I think immigration is a good thing for most countries - but they transmute the foibles of their native tongues into English in a way that's difficult to figure out.

It takes a huge amount of effort to move from a successful high-tech prototype to broader adoption of an imaging technology.

You can't connect the dots looking forward; you can only connect them looking backwards. So you have to trust that the dots will somehow connect in your future.

I don't think the woman in French 'Vogue' was an object. She was always a real woman.

A tin roof is one of the greatest indicators of prosperity in the developing world.

I do have a right to talk about my life, to tell my truth from my perspective.

What you lack in talent can be made up with desire, hustle and giving 110 percent all the time.