I want, of course, peace, grace, and beauty. How do you do that? You work for it.

I thought, if ever there were a time to write a book about hope, it's now.

With optimism, you look upon the sunny side of things. People say, 'Studs, you're an optimist.' I never said I was an optimist. I have hope because what's the alternative to hope? Despair? If you have despair, you might as well put your head in the oven.

That's why I wrote this book: to show how these people can imbue us with hope. I read somewhere that when a person takes part in community action, his health improves. Something happens to him or to her biologically. It's like a tonic.

You happen to be talking to an agnostic. You know what an agnostic is? A cowardly atheist.

If solace is any sort of succor to someone, that is sufficient. I believe in the faith of people, whatever faith they may have.

I'm not up on the Internet, but I hear that is a democratic possibility. People can connect with each other. I think people are ready for something, but there is no leadership to offer it to them. People are ready to say, 'Yes, we are part of a world.'

Religion obviously played a role in this book and the previous book, too.

We are the most powerful nation in the world, but we're not the only nation in the world. We are not the only people in the world. We are an important people, the wealthiest, the most powerful and, to a great extent, generous. But we are part of the world.

I think it's realistic to have hope. One can be a perverse idealist and say the easiest thing: 'I despair. The world's no good.' That's a perverse idealist. It's practical to hope, because the hope is for us to survive as a human species. That's very realistic.

I want, of course, peace, grace, and beauty. How do you do that? You work for it.

I hope for peace and sanity - it's the same thing.

Someone who does an act. In a democratic society, you're supposed to be an activist; that is, you participate. It could be a letter written to an editor.

I hope that memory is valued - that we do not lose memory.

I want to praise activists through the years. I praise those of the past as well, to have them honored.

I've always felt, in all my books, that there's a deep decency in the American people and a native intelligence - providing they have the facts, providing they have the information.

I want a language that speaks the truth.

We use the word 'hope' perhaps more often than any other word in the vocabulary: 'I hope it's a nice day.' 'Hopefully, you're doing well.' 'So how are things going along? Pretty good. Going to be good tomorrow? Hope so.'

That's what we're missing. We're missing argument. We're missing debate. We're missing colloquy. We're missing all sorts of things. Instead, we're accepting.

When you become part of something, in some way you count. It could be a march; it could be a rally, even a brief one. You're part of something, and you suddenly realize you count. To count is very important.

I want people to talk to one another no matter what their difference of opinion might be.

All the other books ask, 'What's it like?' What was World War II like for the young kid at Normandy, or what is work like for a woman having a job for the first time in her life? What's it like to be black or white?

So people are ready. I feel hopeful in that sense.

I always love to quote Albert Einstein because nobody dares contradict him.

People are ready to say, 'Yes, we are ready for single-payer health insurance.' We are the only industrialized country in the world that does not have national health insurance. We are the richest in wealth and the poorest in health of all the industrial nations.

Nonetheless, do I have respect for people who believe in the hereafter? Of course I do. I might add, perhaps even a touch of envy too, because of the solace.

Why are we born? We're born eventually to die, of course. But what happens between the time we're born and we die? We're born to live. One is a realist if one hopes.

But once you become active in something, something happens to you. You get excited and suddenly you realize you count.

Chicago is not the most corrupt American city. It's the most theatrically corrupt.

Chicago is not the most corrupt American city. Its the most theatrically corrupt.

Work is a search for daily meaning as well as for daily bread.

Ordinary people are capable of doing extraordinary things, and that's what it's all about. They must count.

Beauty, like truth, is relative to the time when one lives and to the individual who can grasp it. The expression of beauty is in direct ratio to the power of conception the artist has acquired.

Because beauty isn't enough, there must be something more.

Oh! this opponent, this collaborator against your will, whose notion of beauty always differs from yours and whose means are often too limited for active assistance to your intentions!

The kind of beauty I want most is the hard-to-get kind that comes from within - strength, courage, dignity.

Beauty set up distance between other people and me. It warped their behavior.

Do not confuse beauty with beautiful. Beautiful is a human judgment. Beauty is All. The difference is everything.

The double hundred Fowler hit in the Madras Test was an absolute beauty.

Only on paper has humanity yet achieved glory, beauty, truth, knowledge, virtue, and abiding love.

I had a lot of resentment for a while toward Kim Novak. But I don't mind her anymore. She's okay. We've become friends. I even asked her before this trip for some beauty tips.

You don't know what the Chinese expect in the way of beauty. The presentation is just a farce. You come into a room filled with 50 people and they don't talk to you. There's very little interaction.

Then Christ shall be clothed with all the beauty of the elect as if with a long tunic variously adorned, in which He shall shine as if covered with all manner of precious stones.

There is no spot of ground, however arid, bare or ugly, that cannot be tamed into such a state as may give an impression of beauty and delight.

Endurance is nobler than strength, and patience than beauty.

To give pain is the tyranny; to make happy, the true empire of beauty.

There's one more thing I want to say. It's a touchy subject. Black beauty. Black sensuality. We live in a culture where the beauty of black people isn't always as celebrated as other types. I'd like to help change that if I can!

In things to be seen at once, much variety makes confusion, another vice of beauty. In things that are not seen at once, and have no respect one to another, great variety is commendable, provided this variety transgress not the rules of optics and geometry.

The idea that happiness could have a share in beauty would be too much of a good thing.