The best Christmas trees come very close to exceeding nature. If some of our great decorated trees had been grown in a remote forest area with lights that came on every evening as it grew dark, the whole world would come to look at them and marvel at the mystery of their great beauty.

I don't pick subjects as much as they pick me.

Art is a by-product of an honest and successful attempt to do something well.

I just wish insignificance had more stature.

... all of us talk faster than we listen.

Believing is such a comfort that it's hard to give up a belief just because it isn't true.

Some people who hated Americans set out to kill a lot of us and they succeeded [on 9/11]....We're trying to protect ourselves with more weapons. We have to do it, I guess, but it might be better if we figured out how to behave as a nation in a way that wouldn't make so many people in the world want to kill us.