The best way to measure how much you've grown isn't by inches or the number of laps you can now run around the track or even your grade point average - though those things are important, to be sure. It's what you've done with your time, how you've chosen to spend your days, and whom you have touched this year. That, to me, is the greatest measure of success.

Here’s what I think: the only reason I’m not ordinary is that no one else sees me that way.

There are always going to be jerks in the world . . . [but] there are more good people on this earth than bad people, and the good people watch out for each other and take care of each other.

I eat like a tortoise eats, if you've ever seen a tortoise eating. Like some prehistoric swamp thing.

We carry with us, as human beings, not just the capacity to be kind, but the very choice of kindness.

You can't blend in when you were born to stand out.

The things we do outlast our mortality. The things we do are like monuments that people build to honor heroes after they've died. They're like the pyramids that the Egyptians built to honor the pharaohs. Only instead of being made of stone, they're made out of the memories people have of you.