Look at the size of the universe and look at what we're discovering about string theory. There's a wide-eyed sense of we're just getting started here.

We can choose the way of compassion, the way of forgiveness, the way of generosity. Or we can choose other paths and those have very real consequences in the world. This is absolutely crucial.

Creating and sharing beautiful things has provided me with the inspiration that we can do things we never thought we could do and that we will get to see wonderful things we never thought we would see.

If your faith is threatened by something that's true, then it wasn't much of a faith to begin with, was it?

You're here, you're breathing, you are the recipient of an extraordinary act of generosity called life.

Hope. People want hope. We crave hope. We long for hope. Hope has been present since the very beginning. And almost in the worst situations of human history, you often find the greatest amount of hope. The very nature of the situation, the way stepped-on people created within them even more hope than when things were going fine. Hope has always been around.

The ancient Hebrews had a word for this awareness of the importance of things. They called it kavod. Kavod originally was a business term, referring to the heaviness of something, which was crucial in weights and measures and the maintaining of fairness in transactions. Over time the word began to take on a more figurative meaning, referring to the importance and significance of something.