Bad improvisers block action, often with a high degree of skill. Good improvisers develop action.

Sometimes [genius] is just the thing that emerges after twenty years of working at your kitchen table.

Do I think that American democracy ends if Trump is president? No! I think, there are plenty of checks and balances in place. I think he would do some damage to the country but we would recover. The office of the presidency and American democratic institutions are a lot stronger than one person. So if he wins, our job is just to keep the office strong, right? And hope he'll be replaced by something better!

There is this tremendous body of knowledge in the world of academia where extraordinary numbers of incredibly thoughtful people have taken the time to examine on a really profound level the way we live our lives and who we are and where we've been. That brilliant learning sometimes gets trapped in academia and never sees the light of day.

Hard work is a prison sentence only if it does not have meaning. Once it does, it becomes the kind of thing that makes you grab your wife around the waist and dance a jig.

You can't concentrate on doing anything if you are thinking, “What's gonna happen if it doesn't go right?

In a country that never wins anything: in Canada, if one of our athletes so much as makes the final in a World Championship, we declare a national holiday.