“Freedom is a loose leash, license to be different from your mother and still be loved…Freedom is…not insisting that your daughter share your limitations. Freedom also means letting your daughter reject you when she needs to and come back when she needs to. Freedom is unconditional love.”

Humor is one of the most serious tools we have for dealing with impossible situations.

A book is a box brimming with incendiary material. The reader strikes the match.

Silence is the bluntest of blunt instruments.

I have accepted fear as a part of life – specifically the fear of change… I have gone ahead despite the pounding in the heart that says: turn back.

Fear is a sign-usually a sign that I’m doing something right.

Young people never believe in the possibility of their own deaths. That’s one reason old men can send them to war.

I don’t think you will ever fully understand how you’ve touched my life and made me who I am.

Every time we hit an air pocket and the plane dropped about five hundred feet (leaving my stomach in my mouth)

Creativity demands nothing less than all you have. Talent alone is never enough.

Divorce is my generation’s coming of age ceremony – a ritual scarring that makes anything that happens afterward seem bearable.

Compose with utter freedom and edit with utter discipline.

Advice is what we ask for when we already know the answer but wish we didn’t.

How could one create life with someone who represented death?

Home is where your books are.

Driving me away is easier than saying goodbye.

We were not human beings going through spiritual experiences; we were spiritual beings going through human experiences, in order to grow.

I’m looking forward to getting back on the field, it’s what I love to do.

It feels good to give back to the people who support you.

There is no way I would have written these poems had I not come back.

What is important is family, friends, giving back to your community and finding meaning in life.

It’s enough to indulge and to be selfish but true happiness is really when you start giving back.

I think that there are points where you become so close to an actor,

Happiness doesn’t come from commercial success but from the quality of work that you give back to your immediate community.

If you are prepared to make a fool of yourself for them then you usually get that back.