“Not facing a fire doesn’t put it out.”

Success and failure are equally disastrous.

The helpless can’t help the helpless.

Talent? What is talent but the ability to get away with something?

Life is an unanswered question, but let’s still believe in the dignity and importance of the question.

How long does it have to go on? This punishment? Haven’t I done time enough, haven’t I served my term? can’t I apply for a-pardon?

Death is one moment, and life is so many of them.

I believe the way to write a good play is to convince yourself it is easy to do, then go ahead and do it with ease.

We’ve had this date with each other from the beginning.

Living with someone you love can be lonelier than living entirely alone, if the on that you love doesn’t love you.

A high station in life is earned by the gallantry with which appalling experiences are survived with grace.

Yes, I have tricks in my pocket, I have things up my sleeve. But I am the opposite of a stage magician.

It’s hard enough for me to write what I want to write without me trying to write what you say they want me to write which I don’t want to write.

The world is a funny paper read backwards. And that way it isn’t so funny.

Friends are God’s way of apologizing to us for our families

All your Western theologies, the whole mythology of them, are based on the concept of God as a senile delinquent.

Don’t you think there is always something unspoken between two people?

Setting a good example for your children takes all the fun out of middle age.

When you’re an adult, things mellow out. I think when you’re a teenager and you are sad and the world is ending, everything is about that one sadness.

Every nation on the Earth that embraces market economics and the free enterprise system is pulling millions of its people out of poverty. The free enterprise system creates prosperity, not denies it.

When you play quarterback, you have to process information quickly, get the ball out of your hand to the right guy.

Assoon as I stepped out of my mother’s womb on to dry land, I realized that I had made a mistake?but the trouble with children is that they are not returnable.

The world doesn’t need more people playing small. It’s time to stop hiding out and start stepping out. It’s time to stop needing and start leading. It’s time to start sharing your gifts instead of hoarding them or pretending they don’t exist. It’s time you started playing the game of life in a “big” way.

There is nothing we can do about the lynching now, as we are out-numbered and without arms.

I want immigration reform to pass, I want people to be able to come out of the shadows.