“life is meaningless unless you bring meaning to it; … it is up to us to create our own existence. Unless you do something, unless you make something it’s as though you aren’t there.”

For me, I find that even though I’ve accomplished a few things in my life, looking back on accomplishments doesn’t give me a sense of satisfaction.

Your assumptions are your windows on the world. Scrub them off every once in a while or the light won’t come in. If you challenge your own, you won’t be so quick to accept the unchallenged assumptions of others.

When I’m writing, I want to try to be seen as a good writer.

artists try to say things that can’t be said. in a fragile net of words, gestures, or colors, we hope to capture a feeling.

Originality is unexplored territory. You get there by carrying a canoe – you can’t take a taxi.

Your assumptions are your windows on the world. Scrub them off every once in awhile, or the light won’t come in.

The other one, and probably an equal pleasure, is finding out how I can be helpful and then really being helpful.

War is war and Hell is hell, and if you ask me, War is a lot worse.

Republicans are as capable of coming up with great ideas and moving this country along as anyone – they just don’t do it.

And I think belief is one of those things that comes to people in their own way. And just because I believe in something doesn’t mean I think that you should.

I would box them into a corner with a badly formed question, and they didn’t know how to get out of it. Now, I let them take me through it step by step, and I listen.

How can I ever hope to communicate something to you unless I get signals back from you that I’m on the right track or that I’ve started at some place that you’re familiar with?

No man or woman of the humblest sort can really be strong, gentle and good, without the world being better for it, without somebody being helped and comforted by the very existence of that goodness.

Being mystified is a good beginning, because you won’t do what you’ve done before.

If you don’t listen deeply, the connection won’t take place.

Musicals are hard for me because I got thrown out of the glee club in high school, because I couldn’t sing in tune at the time.

Memory is not just the imprint of the past time upon us; it is the keeper of what is meaningful for our deepest hopes and fears.

I have been defeated; in Christ, I am already victorious. How meaningful are the words, “in Christ.”

The internet could be a very positive step towards education, organisation and participation in a meaningful society.

That’s all accurate and of some importance, but of far more importance is the fact that elections just don’t take place, not in any meaningful sense of the term ‘election.’

When I talk to audiences about the size and age of the cosmos, people often say, “It makes me feel so insignificant.” I answer, “The bigger and more impersonal the universe is, the more meaningful you are, because this vast.

the world is neither meaningful, nor absurd. it quite simply is, and that, in any case, is what is so remarkable about it.

I have not been part of an active counterculture movement, as it is not the approach that I have personally pursued to create a qualitatively beneficial and meaningful impact on society.

Competition in its best form is a test of self. It has nothing to do with medals.