The human species was too fond of lying, cheating, envy, ignorance, self-pity, self-righteousness, and utopian visions that always led to mass murder-but until and if it destroyed itself, it harbored the potential to become nobler, to take responsibility for its actions, to live and let live, and to earn the stewardship of the earth.

Never leave a friend behind. Friends are all we have to get us through this life--and they are the only things from this world that we could hope to see in the next.

It may sound strange, but when you're a kid and you're in that environment, for some reason for a long time you think, when the doors are closed in other houses, this is what it's like everywhere. And then at some point you begin to realize that isn't true, and books were really the educational system that showed me that there were many better and different ways to live a life.

You can't always win arguments as a writer, but you have to just go ahead and say, well, I'm doing it that way anyway.

Every eye sees its own special vision; every ear hears a most different song. In each man's troubled heart, an incision would reveal a unique, shameful wrong.

Those who wish to punish the current and future generations for the inequities of a generation long gone, and who equate justice with revenge, are the most dangerous people in the world.

If we were capable of thinking of everything, we would still be living in Eden, rent-free with all-you-can-eat buffets and infinitely better daytime TV programming.