The first step - especially for young people with energy and drive and talent, but not money - the first step to controlling your world is to control your culture. To model and demonstrate the kind of world you demand to live in. To write the books. Make the music. Shoot the films. Paint the art.

You can spend your whole life building a wall of facts between you and anything real.

Until you find something to fight for, you settle for something to fight against.

The truth is you can be orphaned again and again and again. The truth is, you will be. And the secret is, this will hurt less and less each time until you can't feel a thing. Trust me on this.

I realized that my book readings were boring me. I was going to go up there and read a passage and sleepwalk through the whole event and I needed to make it more interesting. I wanted to be running and jumping and do something so that the event would be so exciting. I had to trick myself into having fun every time.

More and more, the hardest part of crying is when I can't stop.

Somehow it seems wrong to photograph a blind person. It’s like stealing something valuable they don’t even know they own.