"Appalachia is a wound, and a joy, and a poem.

A knot of complication.

But you cannot know a place without loving it, hating it,

and feeling everything in between.

You cannot understand the complex people by only looking at the way

they have been portrayed on the television and movie screens.

One must go to the mountains to drive these winding roads

One must sit and jaw for a while with folks on their front porches

Must attend weddings and high school graduations.

One must study the history of the place and come to understand it

Must sit at a wake and look at the lines on the faces of the people

and the callouses on their hands and understand the

Gestational and generational complexities

Of poverty and pride and culture.

Something inside you has to crack to let in the light so

your eyes and brains and heart can adjust properly."

"I believe that how you sell is a free sample of how you solve."

"Resentment is like drinking poison and waiting for the other person to die."

“Mother is the name for God in the lips and hearts of little children.”

“They say the definition of an optimist is someone who believes the future is uncertain, and a pessimist is always right but they derive no satisfaction.”

“I was drifting, like most people do when they come out of university. I thought acting would last about a year. Here we are, 35 years [later]. There was a sort of excursion in those early years where I was also writing my own material with a couple of writing partners. Those were very happy days. I remember feeling the most satisfied and like a human being at the end of those days, more than any day on any film set ever. You know this: Any kind of primary creativity where you actually turn a blank page into something hits a very profound spot and one that is deeply satisfying.”

"They say no one's gonna save you

You've gotta make it on your own

But I called from the dark

And you picked up the phone

On my back in the raging blue

I looked up, and you cut right through

And when I came back empty-handed

You met me in the road

And you fell on my neck

And you took me back home

After all that I took from you

After all that I put you through

Here I am"

As a world waits in impotent frustration,

The Sovereign God of the universe laughs, whistles

And rules from His throne.

The Alpha and Omega determines the end from the beginning.

He raises and deposes kings.

God's designed pauses give opportunities to remember it is not by might,

Nor by power

But by His Spirit

That details of all time are orchestrated.

With God on the throne, I have nothing to fear.

Sovereign Lord, give me peace while I wait—and pray—in your pause.

“America needs Thanksgiving now more than ever. It’s inevitable, due to our battered psyche. This is a nation that’s in pain.”

"We don't use the people to get the work done, we use the work to get the people done."

“There’s nothing older than the idea that this is new.”

“And especially, you don’t want to go to a college where the professors think that students are there to provide them with an audience for indoctrination.”

"Is she an only?"

"Au contraire, she's not our only...she’s our everything."

“Music is liquid architecture; Architecture is frozen music.”

“John Prine was, without a doubt, one of the greatest songwriters this world will ever know. Many people more qualified than me have written about why that is. And many more will follow. Greatest or not, here’s what it comes down to for me and here’s why he rests on my heart’s mountain top: Because he cared enough to look—at me, you, all of us—until he saw what was noble and then he wrapped us up in melodies and sung us back to ourselves. 

That was the miracle of John Prine. And it was enough.”

“I can only coach the person in front of me.”

"Isn't it interesting how life's boomerangs often bring us home?"

"Mankind will never see an end of trouble until lovers of wisdom come to hold political power, or the holders of power become lovers of wisdom."

“There are only two forces that unite men—fear and interest.”

“Nothing in life is to be feared. It is only to be understood. Now is the time to understand more, so that we may fear less.” 

“After you have exhausted what there is in business, politics, conviviality, love, and so on—have found that none of these finally satisfy, or permanently wear—what remains? Nature remains.”

“There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, than are dreamt of in your philosophy.”

"We recommend coming with a good attitude and a tape measure."

"Booze can be a good servant, but it’s a lousy master."

“Down to Gehenna or up to the Throne,

He travels the fastest who travels alone.”

"When one can see no future, all one can do is the next right thing."

“If you look at the world you'll be distressed. If you look within you'll be depressed. If you look at God you'll be at rest.”

"I can save the day, but you can save the world."

“All you can take with you is that which you’ve given away.”

"Beware, children, you can leave yourself behind. You won't even know when it happened. All children grow up, but some—the wild ones, the ones with the light in their eye—escape."

"I really found what I like to eat by the time I was six. I've saved a lot of experimenting since then, continuing to put a lot of salt on hamburgers and go to it."

The soul attracts that which it secretly harbors; that which it loves, and also that which it fears. Circumstances are the means by which the soul receives its own.

Circumstance does not make the man; it reveals him to himself. Men do not attract that which they want, but that which they are. Men are anxious to improve their circumstances, but are unwilling to improve themselves.

"If his IQ slips any lower we'll have to water him twice a day."

“She is a friend of my mind. She gather me, man. The pieces I am, she gather them and give them back to me in all the right order. It’s good, you know, when you got a woman who is a friend of your mind.”

“You can buy a man's time, you can buy a man's physical presence at a certain place, you can even buy a measured number of skilled muscular motions per hour or day. But you cannot buy enthusiasm, you cannot buy initiative, you cannot buy loyalty; you cannot buy the devotion of hearts, minds, and souls. You have to earn these things.”

“A person who has good thoughts cannot ever be ugly. You can have a wonky nose and a crooked mouth and a double chin and stick-out teeth, but if you have good thoughts they will shine out of your face like sunbeams and you will always look lovely.”

“Power without love is reckless and abusive. Love without power is sentimental and anemic.”

Whose woods these are I think I know.   

His house is in the village though;   

He will not see me stopping here   

To watch his woods fill up with snow.   

My little horse must think it queer   

To stop without a farmhouse near   

Between the woods and frozen lake   

The darkest evening of the year.   

He gives his harness bells a shake   

To ask if there is some mistake.   

The only other sound’s the sweep   

Of easy wind and downy flake.   

The woods are lovely, dark and deep,   

But I have promises to keep,   

And miles to go before I sleep,   

And miles to go before I sleep.

“It’s all about trying to ‘help somebody cross.’ While everybody else is fighting for a seat at the table, talking about ‘#OscarsSoWhite, #OscarsSoWhite,’ I said, ‘Y’all go ahead and do that. While you’re fighting for a seat at the table, I’ll be down in Atlanta building my own.’ Because what I know for sure is that if I could just build this table, God will prepare it for me in the presence of my enemies.”

"Now we rise—

and we are everywhere."

Scott: "Garlic bread is my favorite food. I could honestly eat it for every meal. Or just eat it all the time without even stopping." 

Ramona: "You'd get fat." 

Scott: "Why would I get fat?" 

Ramona: "Bread makes you fat." 

Scott: "Bread makes you fat?"

“Work keeps at bay three great evils: boredom, vice, and need.”

A demonym is any name derived from a place that helps describe people who live there. Californians are people who live in California. Frenchmen live in France. And so on. But what about the demonyms that are seemingly random?

How the heck did people from the Netherlands become the Dutch, for example?

Before we dig into this demonym, there are three terms we need to define: Holland, the Netherlands, and Dutch. In Old English dutch simply meant “people or nation.” (This also explains why Germany is called Deutschland in German.)

Over time, English-speaking people used the word Dutch to describe people from both the Netherlands and Germany. (At that point in time, in the early 1500s, the Netherlands and parts of Germany, along with Belgium and Luxembourg, were all part of the Holy Roman Empire.) Specifically the phrase “High Dutch” referred to people from the mountainous area of what is now southern Germany. “Low Dutch” referred to people from the flatlands in what is now the Netherlands.

Within the Holy Roman Empire, the word “Netherlands” was used to describe people from the low-lying (nether) region (land). The term was so widely used that when they became a formal, separate country in 1815, they became the Kingdom of the Netherlands. The word “Holland” literally meant “wood-land” in Old English and originally referred to people from the northern region of the Netherlands. Over time, it came to apply to the entire country. Got all that?

In some cases, the demonym preceded the place name. For example, Finland is the place where the Finns live, just as Germany is the place where the Germans live. The people came before the official government and place name. (Parts of what we call Germany was called Prussia until 1932.)

In English we denote place of origin by suffixes. The most common suffixes that denote place are: -(a)n (Chicagoan), -er (New Yorker), -ese (Chinese), -ian (Norwegian), and -ish (English). Where did these suffixes come form? Latin, of course. -ish actually comes from Old English, which is why citizens of the British Isles have -ish demonyms: Scottish, Welsh, English, etc. The other suffixes came from Latin, though they each convey slightly different senses. -ese most directly meant “belonging to or originating in a place.” -(a)n and -ian are variations on the same suffix meaning “belonging to.” -er was used principally in the sense of “one having to do with a thing,” as in lawyer or villager. As with most vocabulary in English, they all now coexist and serve the same purpose.

It’s also important not to confuse demonyms with adjectives. You can listen to an Argentinian song, but it is sung by an Argentine.

Here are a few of our other favorite exceptions to the rule:

Kiwi

Neapolitan

Liverpudlian

Cypriot

Czech

Turk

Buckeye

Hoosier

Spaniard

Greek

Swiss

Swede

Uzbek

"We have been the recipients of the choicest bounties of Heaven. We have been preserved, these many years, in peace and prosperity. We have grown in numbers, wealth, and power as no other nation has ever grown. But we have forgotten God. We have forgotten the gracious hand which preserved us in peace, and multiplied and enriched and strengthened us; and we have vainly imagined, in the deceitfulness of our hearts, that all these blessings were produced by some superior wisdom and virtue of our own. Intoxicated with unbroken success, we have become too self-sufficient to feel the necessity of redeeming and preserving grace, too proud to pray to the God that made us."

“Email is a wonderful thing for people whose role in life is to be on top of things. But not for me; my role is to be on the bottom of things. What I do takes long hours of studying and uninterruptible concentration. I try to learn certain areas of computer science exhaustively; then I try to digest that knowledge into a form that is accessible to people who don't have time for such study.”

"A gift must never favor the giver."

"I don't like that man. I must get to know him better."

“Never allow someone to be your priority while allowing yourself to be their option.”

"Unbow your head, sister."

“O give thanks unto the LORD, for he is good; because his mercy endureth for ever.”

“Thanksgiving Day is a jewel to set in the hearts of honest men, but be careful that you do not take the day and leave out the gratitude.”

"We were together.

I forget the rest."

"The first to apologize is the bravest.

The first to forgive is the strongest.

The first to forget is the happiest."

“This is my fault, Honey. If I hadn't...this wouldn't have happened. I’m so sorry.”

“You’re not that powerful, Dad. Eat your food.”

“We each fall short, yet we are each enough.”

“Laughter is what gives me forward motion. We are the only creatures that both laugh and weep. I think it’s because we are the only creatures that see the difference between the way things are and the way they might be. Tears bring relief. Laughter brings release.

Some years ago I came across a phrase in Greek—asbestos gelos—inextinguishable, unquenchable laughter. I traced it to Homer’s Iliad, where it was used to describe the laughter of the gods. That's my kind of laughter. And he who laughs, lasts.

Good night. Sleep loose.”

“Our revels now are ended. These our actors,

As I foretold you, were all spirits, and

Are melted into air, into thin air:

And like the baseless fabric of this vision,

The cloud-capp'd tow'rs, the gorgeous palaces,

The solemn temples, the great globe itself,

Yea, all which it inherit, shall dissolve,

And, like this insubstantial pageant faded,

Leave not a rack behind. We are such stuff

As dreams are made on; and our little life

Is rounded with a sleep.”

“To be sure I must; and therefore I may assume that your silence gives consent.”

“Oft expectation fails and most oft there

Where most it promises, and oft it hits

Where hope is coldest and despair most fits.”

"Woe the barren world, the world without compliment or apology."

“The spirit of liberty is the spirit which is not too sure that it is right.” 

“I beseech you, in the bowels of Christ, think it possible you may be mistaken.”

“It is time for you to go home. You have been a thirsty man looking for a drink and all the while standing knee-deep in a flowing stream.

There is really nothing you must be. And there is nothing you must do. There is really nothing you must have. And there is nothing you must know. There is nothing you must become.

However, it helps to understand that fire burns and that when it rains, the earth gets wet.

Whatever, there are consequences. No body is exempt.”

“I am a fragment of a mirror whose whole design and shape I do not know. Nevertheless, with what I have I can reflect light into the dark places of this world—into the black places in the hearts of men—and change some things in some people. Perhaps others may see and do likewise. This is what I am about. This is the meaning of my life.”

“I believe that imagination is stronger than knowledge. That myth is more potent than history. That dreams are more powerful than facts. That hope always triumphs over experience. That laughter is the only cure for grief. And I believe that love is stronger than death.”

“Those who can make you believe absurdities can make you commit atrocities.”

"Before I learned the art, a punch was just a punch and a kick just a kick.

After I learned the art, a punch was no longer a punch, a kick no longer a kick.

Now that I understand the art, a punch is just a punch and a kick is just a kick."

"Sociology is psychology at scale."

"I made very few promises, and kept them all."

“Don’t sacrifice your career for your job.”

"If some is good, more must be better."

"I have a hypothesis, though that's all it is: The most common root cause of disappointment in life is missed expectations."

“The world needs fewer gurus and more scholars. Gurus preach from intuition; scholars teach from evidence. Gurus promote themselves; scholars promote ideas. Gurus make promises; scholars ask questions.”

“And now here is my secret, a very simple secret: It is only with the heart that one can see rightly; what is essential is invisible to the eye.”

“God, grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change,

"Much of this testimony reveals that while technologically and financially you are giants, morally you are pygmies."

"In places like Abilene, Kansas, the big sins, left unchallenged, would have had very practical and disastrous effects. Sloth could lead to the failure of a family farm; gluttony and inebriation to the destruction of a family; lust to the ruination of a young man or woman; vanity to excessive spending, debt, and bankruptcy.

In places like that, people had an awareness not only of sin but of the different kinds of sins and the different remedies for each. Some sins, such as anger and lust, are like wild beasts. They have to be fought through habits of restraint. Other sins, such as mockery and disrespect, are like stains. They can be expunged only by absolution, by apology, remorse, restitution, and cleansing. Still others, such as stealing, are like a debt. They can be rectified only by repaying what you owe to society. Sins such as adultery, bribery, and betrayal are more like treason than like crime; they damage the social order. Social harmony can be rewoven only by slowly recommitting to relationship and rebuilding trust. The sins of arrogance and pride arise from a perverse desire for status and superiority. They only remedy for them is to humble oneself before others.

In other words, people in earlier times inherited a vast moral vocabulary and set of moral tools, developed over centuries and handed down from generation to generation. This was a practical inheritance, like learning how to speak a certain language, which people could use to engage their own moral struggles."

"We who lived in concentration camps can remember the men who walked through the huts comforting others, giving away their last piece of bread. They may have been few in number, but they offer sufficient proof that everything can be taken from a man but one thing: the last of the human freedoms—to choose one's attitude in any given set of circumstances...to choose one's own way."

“We succeeded in taking that picture [from deep space], and, if you look at it, you see a dot. That’s here. That’s home. That’s us. On it, everyone you ever heard of, every human being who ever lived, lived out their lives. The aggregate of all our joys and sufferings, thousands of confident religions, ideologies and economic doctrines, every hunter and forager, every hero and coward, every creator and destroyer of civilizations, every king and peasant, every young couple in love, every hopeful child, every mother and father, every inventor and explorer, every teacher of morals, every corrupt politician, every superstar, every supreme leader, every saint and sinner in the history of our species, lived there on a mote of dust, suspended in a sunbeam.

The earth is a very small stage in a vast cosmic arena. Think of the rivers of blood spilled by all those generals and emperors so that in glory and in triumph they could become the momentary masters of a fraction of a dot. Think of the endless cruelties visited by the inhabitants of one corner of the dot on scarcely distinguishable inhabitants of some other corner of the dot. How frequent their misunderstandings, how eager they are to kill one another, how fervent their hatreds. Our posturings, our imagined self-importance, the delusion that we have some privileged position in the universe, are challenged by this point of pale light.

Our planet is a lonely speck in the great enveloping cosmic dark. In our obscurity—in all this vastness—there is no hint that help will come from elsewhere to save us from ourselves. It is up to us. It’s been said that astronomy is a humbling, and I might add, a character-building experience. To my mind, there is perhaps no better demonstration of the folly of human conceits than this distant image of our tiny world. To me, it underscores our responsibility to deal more kindly and compassionately with one another and to preserve and cherish that pale blue dot, the only home we’ve ever known.”

“Now, I’m nobody, but I think I was able to meet the challenge. I did what I had to—when I had to—and I was lucky to be able to do it.”

“How do we get ahead of crazy if we don’t know how crazy thinks?“

"The privately educated Englishman is the greatest dissembler on earth… Was, is now, and ever shall be, for as long as our disgraceful school system remains intact. Nobody will charm you so glibly, disguise his feelings from you better, cover his tracks more skillfully, or find it harder to confess to you that he's been a damn fool. Nobody acts braver when he's frightened stiff, or happier when he's miserable; nobody can flatter you better when he hates you than your extrovert Englishman or woman."

"I smell like sleep. I need to take a shower at your place. Worst case, I need to wash my bangs in the sink."

"You're a kite dancing in a hurricane, Mr. Bond."

“A room without books is like a body without a soul.”

"Carve every word before you let it fall."

"I feel excited and lucky to be working on this project for Netflix. Here's what I have learned, if you retire to spend more time with your family, check with your family first. Thanks for watching, drive safely."

“Don’t look too long at the door that closes, or you won’t see the door that opens. The ancient Egyptian myth claims that every 500 years the phoenix bird would fly into a fire of its own origin and burn to ashes, only to rise again full of vigor.”

“I do not aim with my hand; he who aims with his hand has forgotten the face of his father.

I aim with my eye.

I do not shoot with my hand; he who shoots with his hand has forgotten the face of his father.

I shoot with my mind.

I do not kill with my gun; he who kills with his gun has forgotten the face of his father.

I kill with my heart.” 

"I still have faith, but I don't know why. Maybe it's the fire in my little girl's eyes."

"Walked out this morning, I don't believe what I saw—

A hundred billion bottles washed up on the shore.
Seems I'm not alone in being alone,
A hundred billion castaways... looking for a home.”

"I thought it would last my time— 

The sense that, beyond the town, 

There would always be fields and farms, 

Where the village louts could climb 

Such trees as were not cut down; 

I knew there’d be false alarms

In the papers about old streets 

And split level shopping, but some 

Have always been left so far; 

And when the old part retreats 

As the bleak high-risers come 

We can always escape in the car.

Things are tougher than we are, just 

As earth will always respond 

However we mess it about; 

Chuck filth in the sea, if you must: 

The tides will be clean beyond. 

—But what do I feel now? Doubt?

Or age, simply? The crowd 

Is young in the M1 cafe; 

Their kids are screaming for more— 

More houses, more parking allowed, 

More caravan sites, more pay. 

On the Business Page, a score

Of spectacled grins approve 

Some takeover bid that entails 

Five per cent profit (and ten 

Per cent more in the estuaries): move 

Your works to the unspoilt dales 

(Grey area grants)! And when

You try to get near the sea 

In summer . . . 

        It seems, just now, 

To be happening so very fast; 

Despite all the land left free 

For the first time I feel somehow 

That it isn’t going to last,

That before I snuff it, the whole 

Boiling will be bricked in 

Except for the tourist parts— 

First slum of Europe: a role 

It won’t be hard to win, 

With a cast of crooks and tarts.

And that will be England gone, 

The shadows, the meadows, the lanes, 

The guildhalls, the carved choirs. 

There’ll be books; it will linger on 

In galleries; but all that remains 

For us will be concrete and tyres.

Most things are never meant. 

This won’t be, most likely; but greeds 

And garbage are too thick-strewn 

To be swept up now, or invent 

Excuses that make them all needs. 

I just think it will happen, soon."

"I am not resigned to the shutting away of loving hearts in the hard ground.

So it is, and so it will be, for so it has been, time out of mind:

Into the darkness they go, the wise and the lovely.

Crowned with lilies and with laurel they go; but I am not resigned.

Lovers and thinkers, into the earth with you.

Be one with the dull, the indiscriminate dust.

A fragment of what you felt, of what you knew,

A formula, a phrase remains,—but the best is lost.

The answers quick and keen, the honest look, the laughter, the love,—

They are gone. They are gone to feed the roses.

Elegant and curled is the blossom. Fragrant is the blossom. I know. But I do not approve.

More precious was the light in your eyes than all the roses in the world.

Down, down, down into the darkness of the grave.

Gently they go, the beautiful, the tender, the kind;

Quietly they go, the intelligent, the witty, the brave.

I know. But I do not approve. And I am not resigned."

"The book I wrote, The Outpost, remains the professional work I am proudest of. It is not what has resulted in the most Twitter memes, but it is the most meaningful. It was the one least about me; and it may be one professional achievement, maybe, perhaps, that has a chance of outlasting me. That which you end up doing in the service of something greater than you—even if it means that you feel lesser, humbler, even worthless by comparison—by honoring the humanity of others, that will allow you to get in closer touch with your own."

"My name is Ozymandias, King of Kings:

Look on my works, ye mighty, and despair!"

“He is a man so sui generis, that I do not wonder at his not being apprehended till he is seen. His influence is of a curious sort. There is a vague nobleness and thorough sweetness about him, which move people to their very depths, without their being able to explain why. The logicians have an incessant triumph over him, but their triumph is of no avail. He conquers minds, as well as hearts, wherever he goes; and without convincing anybody’s reason of any one thing, exalts their reason, and makes their minds worth more than they ever were before.”

"If I've learned one thing above all else, know what it is? What you put out into the world will always come back to you, but never how you predict."

"It is that laser beam of self-reflection that makes you the perfect partner. You are the key to me beating Doris."

"Who's Doris?"

"She's the Cobra Kai to my Daniel-san, and I swear on Earnest's clogged-up dead heart that that witch will not take our title!"

"There's a new ambition: to get on disability. Or, if you look at data on unemployed young males, it's amazing (A) How many live at home, (B) How much time they spend playing video games, and (C) How few have a driver's license. The sense of urgency of, say, fifty to sixty years ago, is gone. And when you look at information technology, our most dynamic sector, what do people use it to do? To have Amazon ship them packages, and to watch Netflix at home. Again, it's just all very comfortable, and not at all dynamic from a macro point of view."

"It's real simple: we playin' by Grandma's rules...you eat, you talk."

"One person standing on the word of God is a majority." 

"It's like Swiss cheese, just full of holes. Hitchens was deeply well read and an interpreter of modern life, and Bannon is sort of a Goldman Sachs/hack/wannabe producer in Hollywood who kind of stumbled on, after 9/11, this philosophy of raw American nationalism, kind of thoughtless. I do think he [Hitchens] would have aimed for Bannon, this sort of intellectual poser, but there's no way Christopher Hitchens would have voted for Hillary Clinton."

"I think he [Christopher Hitchens] would be very active in the resistance. He would have more or less ignored Trump himself. He thought Bill Clinton was a titanic vulgarian. He would have jumped out of his shoes to see Trump in his pomp. I think he would have gone for Steve Bannon. He would have honed in on Steve Bannon, who revealed himself yesterday as a semi-literate neurotic when he said, 'Every morning, President Trump tells Reince and I....' He means Reince and me. I mean, that's a gross illiteracy. The idea of him being an intellectual is laughable. He's another neurotic windbag."

"Christopher would have said, 'Look to the language.' First, with Trump, the incredible poverty and paucity of his language. We remember 'the nattering nabobs of negativity,' well that's what's coming out of Bannon's and Trump's mouths now. The idea that Bannon is the intellectual heavyweight and ideologue of this kind of supranationalist wing of the Republican Party is, like, laughable."

"I have become so accustomed to unpleasant thoughts and hardships 'til that has become my new normal. Pain is my constant companion."

"We've killed God. We've eliminated hierarchy. The only remaining altar is man's ambition, to feel superior to other men."

"There is no cure. The solution is disease, because once diseased, there is hope for a cure."

“After many months of looking around, we happened to meet and she just blew me away. She has this sort of energy that makes every problem seem surmountable.”

"Let us neither express, nor cherish, any harsh feeling toward any citizen who, by his vote, has differed with us. Let us at all times remember that all American citizens are brothers of a common country, and should dwell together in the bonds of fraternal feeling."

"Now, at 86, I've seen a lot of people get older, and I've never seen anyone who felt good about their children but felt bad about their life. I've seen plenty of people with lots of money, where it hasn't worked out well for the family (either they didn't feel good about their children, or their children didn't feel good about them). Either way, they failed. At the most important teaching job they had. Sometimes it happens for extraneous reasons, but I've really never met anybody, regardless their economic circumstances, who felt their life was a failure who felt good about their children...whom they brought into the world. Success in business—but failure in the home—is failure in life."

"Davos is where billionaires tell millionaires how the middle class feels."

"What that mean to me? 'Bonnie working.'  I don’t care if she working! Go ask her for the ten dollars if she working. Talking about 'Bonnie working.' Why ain’t you working?"

"Shakespeare was so ahead of his time that people still don't talk that way."

"Watch out for this one; he's rat tricky."

"You should let me take your picture sometime."

"No thanks. I'm with the Cherokee on this one: the fewer photographs out there of me, the better."

"Think before you bark!"

"Is you is or is you ain't got gas money?"

"To Mom for showing me I could, to Dad for insisting I must, and to Frank, Shun, and Tom for showing me how."

"So here's what we know: it's definitely 'Chicken on a Stick.' And your play is going to be a triumph."

"Hope is essential to life. Just as the body cannot live without dreams, the soul cannot live without hope."

“I'm back, I'm back

Prouder than ever baby

Louder than ever maybe

One more pill, just one more beer

One less star in the atmosphere for us

So I just kept breathing my friends

Waiting for the man to choose

Saying this ain't the day that it ends

'Cause there's no white light and I'm not through

I'm alive, I'm alive...

And I've got so much more that I want to do with the music

Was it music that saved me?

Or the way that you prayed for me?

Guess either way, I thank you I'm alive

And tomorrow is mine, I said tomorrow is mine

Said I just got to keep on breathing

I said no, don't let go breathing, breathing...

Got to keep on, got to keep on, got to keep on

I just got to keep on breathing

I'm alive, I'm alive...

And I've got so much more that I want to give

Was it music?

Was it science that saved me?

Or the way that you prayed and prayed for me?

Well I thank you I'm alive.”

"The white helmets respond to an average of 35 attacks a day, fighting for life in a vicious war. They were nominated this year for a Nobel Peace Prize. Syria has descended into murder on an industrial scale, but on the outer limits of cruelty, humanity begins."

"Danny had this great, really interesting idea: to explore the happiness people anticipate from some experience, compared to the happiness they actually experience in the moment, compared to the happiness they remember from the experience. These are different forms of what [behavioral] economists would call 'utility'—expected, experienced, and remembered. This is [just one example of] work that didn't get done."

"Doubt is not a pleasant condition, but certainty is absurd."

"Zero G, and I feel fine."

"I am a spy, a sleeper, a spook, a man of two faces. Perhaps not surprisingly, I am also a man of two minds, able to see any issue from both sides. Sometimes I flatter myself that this is a talent, but I wonder if what I have should even be called talent. After all, a talent is something you use, not something that uses you. The talent you cannot not use, the talent that possesses you—that is a hazard.”

"What we're currently seeing is an adhocracy...telephone diplomacy. Not yet a coherent strategy. The President-Elect said one of America's weaknesses is its predictability [so we're starting to see the alternative in action]."

"Oh! The theme I've been waiting for all my life. Listen to this sentence: 'A Red Ryder BB gun with a compass in the stock, and this thing which tells time.' Poetry. Sheer poetry, Ralph! An A++++++++!"

"What is success? To laugh often and much; To win the respect of intelligent people and the affection of children; To earn the appreciation of honest critics and endure the betrayal of false friends; To appreciate beauty; To find the best in others; To leave the world a bit better, whether by a healthy child, a garden patch, or a redeemed social condition; To know even one life has breathed easier because you have lived. That is to have succeeded."