“[Music] business can drive you to do that if you don’t have it here. If you’re not strong-minded here, it could steer you the wrong way and when it steers you the wrong way, then it might take forever to get back.”

Words were another sword for the man who wielded them well.

We are powerfully imprisoned in these Dark Ages simply by the terms in which we have been conditioned to think.

Dad, one of my first memories is of sharing my worry with you about the space shuttle poking holes in the atmosphere and letting out all of Earth’s air.

When you don’t know what to do, do what’s right and do what’s in front of you. But not necessarily what’s right in front of you.

I like to bike a lot and do some 300s here and there. Really, I love to bike though. I like being outside and moving around, seeing the good scenery around Miami and such.

The spiritual master can instruct the disciple though many different formats.

If you are not free to say no, your yes is meaningless.

My writing has a lot of surprising twists.

Bewildered as he might be, sometimes a man’s highest calling is simply to stand, and hug.

Giving is what fuels us. Giving is our future.

If I’m going to make music and put my heart and soul into this and dedicate my whole life to it, I want to be making something that 15, 20, 30 years from now, somebody is listening to and that is a staple of the time it came out.

So it’s a matter of fitting your current practices to fit the event and the individual. See, what’s good for you might not be worth a darn for the next guy.

If you just take a single human and put him or her in the forest he or she might not do very well without some sort of education which he got or she got from some tribe.

The strange thing about grinding that might surprise many people is that you can grind things and shape them using materials that are generally somewhat softer than the thing you’re grinding and shaping.

I was a born troublemaker and might as well earn a living at it.

I have never met a vampire personally, but I don’t know what might happen tomorrow.

The latest computer modeling I’ve seen indicates that at mid-century, there might be 150 million people classified as “environmental refugees.”

As cruel as life might be at times, if you throw in the towel, which is what everyone will expect, then nothing good will happen and your life will fall apart. Be better than that!

And when I told my sons I might be in City of Ember, they said, ‘Oh! You’re gonna be the mayor?’ And I hadn’t even read the script yet.