What my children appear to be on the surface is no matter to me. I am fooled neither by gracious manners nor by bad manners. I am interested in what is truly beneath each kind of manners...I want my children to be people- each one separate- each one special- each one a pleasant and exciting variation of all the others

Americans still believe they are cut out to be successful-in everything: love, love-making, luck, luck-giving, money-making, sense-making, cancer-avoiding, clothes-wearing, car-driving, and so on.

I can't hate for long. It isn't worth it.

It is simply in the nature of Armenian to study, to learn, to question, to speculate, to discover, to invent, to revise, to restore, to preserve, to make, and to give.

But who can speak to God, or rather who can't? The question is, who can get an answer?

If you’re alive, you can’t be bored in San Francisco. If you’re not alive, San Francisco will bring you to life.

I used to throw things out, saying, 'This isn't great.' It didn't occur to me that it didn't have to be great.