I receive emails from readers that both break my heart and give me a profound sense of connection. Several months ago, I received an email from a teacher who told me that 'Legend' was the first book one of her troubled young students had ever read to the end. He cried when he finished it. Stories like that stay with you forever.
For the victor peace means the preservation of the position of power which he has secured. For the vanquished it means resigning himself to the position left to him.
But what is happiness except the simple harmony between a man and the life he leads?
Before Nelson Mandela was arrested in 1962, he was an angry, relatively young man. He founded the ANC's military wing. When he was released, he surprised everyone because he was talking about reconciliation and forgiveness and not about revenge.
A man is hindered and distracted in proportion as he draws outward things to himself.
Walt Whitman, he who laid end to end words never seen in each other's company before outside of a dictionary.
Yes, hell exists. It is not a fairy tale. One indeed burns there. This hell is not at the end of life. It is here. At the beginning. Hell is what the infant must experience before he gets to us.
Some statements concern the conscious states of the animal, what he is to himself as an inner life; others concern his original and acquired ways of response, his behavior, what he is an outside observer.
Well, now that he's finished one building, he'll go write four books about it.
God, as Truth, has been for me a treasure beyond price. May He be so to every one of us.
Ryan is my bridge to the past, to memories that lose some of their sting when he recounts them.
They say the test of literary power is whether a man can write an inscription. I say, 'Can he name a kitten?'
A lot of directors don't know what they want to do. Every director I've seen that was a good director that I've admired knew exactly what he wanted to do. They didn't sit there and think about it.
My son was diagnosed with autism. He's OK, he makes eye contact, but he doesn't talk. He needs eight hours a day of very intensive school, and you wouldn't even believe me if I told you how much it costs.
If a lecturer, he wishes to be heard; if a writer, to be read. He always hopes for a public beyond that of the long-suffering wife.
Henson had never spoken to me about Kermit, but he had spoken to Frank Oz about the idea of me doing the character if he became too busy. I felt flattered.
Man has made use of his intelligence, he invented stupidity.
He works his business and manipulates and keeps himself in front of the world.
My grandfather was a civil servant. He was honest, so it would be unfair to say we enjoyed the perils of richness.
I didn't know Michael Hastings very well, but one thing about him was always obvious - he was born to be in the news business, he loved it, he was made for it. He wrote about Iraq and Afghanistan as places he had always been destined to visit.
Manual labor to my father was not only good and decent for it's own sake but, as he was given to saying, it straightened out one's thoughts.
Who has a harder fight than he who is striving to overcome himself.
No guy on the basketball court is a threat to score with LeBron James out there. Not only will LeBron dominate from the offensive end as well, but he's also doing it on the defensive end, which really makes him the complete package.
He had written my mother once that he wanted her to be the first thing he saw every morning and the last thing he ever saw. And that's how it turned out.
A man with an invention on which he has spent his life, but has no means to get it developed for the good of humanity - or even patented for himself - must feel the pinch of poverty very acutely.
Arnold has succeeded at every level, and I believe he is the only person that can unite the people of this state and lead California from its current dysfunctional condition to the bright future that all residents long for.
At times he could be very critical. He didn't like prints on me. He didn't like stripes. He didn't like boldness. He said I was petite and that was taking away from my looks.
Charles was very intent to use his years as Prince of Wales to make his mark while he still had freedom of maneuver that he wouldn't have as King. The first subject he really went for was architecture. It made an impact.
My biggest moment was winning the World Series because everyone in my town was able to feel he was a world champion.
Indeed, man wishes to be happy even when he so lives as to make happiness impossible.
Let one persuade many, and he becomes confirmed and convinced, and cares for no better evidence.
I don't know if God exists, but it would be better for His reputation if He didn't.
All a musician can do is to get closer to the sources of nature, and so feel that he is in communion with the natural laws.
It is very, very difficult for a playwright to write a scene in which a young man has his first deep experience of sex with a girl whom he found immensely attractive, is fully satisfied by this event and gets up and blinds a lot of horses.
And I love that even in the toughest moments, when we're all sweating it - when we're worried that the bill won't pass, and it seems like all is lost - Barack never lets himself get distracted by the chatter and the noise. Just like his grandmother, he just keeps getting up and moving forward... with patience and wisdom, and courage and grace.
Comedians, we're just people who whine. But we happen to be funny when we whine. Like, if Jerry Seinfeld wasn't funny, you'd want to punch him in the face; he'd just seem like a whiner to you. But the fact is that he's funny.
