Err in the direction of kindness.

A country doesn't need a businessman to run it: it needs a heartful, worldly, compassionate leader.

There's this de facto assumption that for something to have value, it has to be economically self-supporting - which imposes a very low ceiling on a culture.

An artist's job is to be interested in things as they are.

I'm always aware of writing around things I can't do, and I've come to think that that's actually what 'style' is - an avoidance of your deficiencies.

What good the prophet in the wilderness may do is incremental and personal. It's good for us to hear someone speak the irrational truth. It's good for us when, in spite of all of the sober, pragmatic, and even correct arguments that war is sometimes necessary someone says: war is large-scale murder, us at our worst, the stupidest guy doing the cruelest thing to the weakest being.

The word 'funny' is a bit like the word 'love' - we don't have enough words to describe the many varieties.