The American idea is as promising, imaginative, and full of the unexpected as the land itself. The land represents freedom - the frontier, the ability to make a new future with your own bare hands.

We spend so much time bantering about the words when the real open conversations might very well be our actions. I worry about our rhetoric.

Learning is a tunnel experience that makes us think more broadly.

I never know when somebody's going to knock on the door of my own unconscious in a way that I wouldn't have anticipated.

I am lucky: I have fantastic doctors and a fantastic dentist.

Self-esteem does not come from surrounding yourself with people and things that seem to increase your value. Real self-esteem is an integration of an inner-value with things in the world around you.

The individuals inside are frequently fighting that their individual voices be heard, while the walls of the place, which are the mask, and the perception, are reluctant to give over to the voices of the individuals. Those in the margins are always trying to get to the center, and those at the center, frequently in the name of tradition, are trying to keep the margins at a distance. Part of the identity of a place is the tension between those in the margins, and those in the center, and they all live behind the walls which wear the tradition.