If a man lived long enough, his past would always overtake him, no matter how fast he ran or how morally he tried to live subsequently. And how men dealt with that law ultimately revealed their true natures.

See Spot run!' is a perfect sentence in some ways. But I doubt the critics would say it was.

My mother, a teacher, encouraged me to use my creativity as an actual way to make a living, and my father, a Mississippi physician, did two things. First, he taught me that all human beings should be treated equally because no one is better than anyone else, and he never pressured me to become a doctor.

Man is the universe becoming conscious of itself.

He always reminded us that every atom in our bodies was once part of a distant star that had exploded. He talked about how evolution moves from simplicity toward complexity, and how human intelligence is the highest known expression of evolution. I remember him telling me that a frog's brain is much more complex than a star. He saw human consciousness as the first neuron of the universe coming to life and awareness. A spark in the darkness, waiting to spread to fire.

Experiences are like hoarded gold. Whenever I dole out a piece of my private suffering, that is when I get letters from all over the world.

...the larger world lay not across oceans but within the human mind and heart.