I remember living in a pretty small neighborhood where you could play in the streets and run around like crazy. My friends and I would ride our bikes around, but instead of just riding our bikes, we were solving crimes and going out in the woods to s...
Well, life isn't a cakewalk, is it?! Eighty-nine percent of the world's most valuable art was created by men living in rat-infested flats. You think Velásquez wore Adidas? You think he enjoyed the luxuries of central heating and twenty-four-hour piz...
During the 20th century, we came to understand that the essence of all substances - their colour, texture, hardness and so forth - is set by their structure, on scales far smaller even than a microscope can see. Everything on Earth is made of atoms, ...
The hard decisions are not the ones you make i in the heat of battle. For harder to make are those involved in speaking your mind about some harebrained scheme which proposes to commit troops to action under conditions where failure is almost certain...
There is a light in this world, a healing spirit more powerful than any darkness we may encounter. We sometimes lose sight of this force when there is suffering, too much pain. Then suddenly, the spirit will emerge through the lives of ordinary peopl...
People ask me, 'Isn't it scary living on your own?' but in this industry, being at events, doing interviews, and doing promotion and constantly chatting about yourself, sometimes it's really nice to just sit in silence or take a day where you can sle...
Women are told from their infancy, and taught by the example of their mothers, that a little knowlegde of human weakness, justly termed cunning, softness of temper; outward obedience, and a scrupulous attention to a puerile kind of proptiety, will ob...
I began my career as an economics professor but became frustrated because the economic theories I taught in the classroom didn't have any meaning in the lives of poor people I saw all around me. I decided to turn away from the textbooks and discover ...
Focus on what you want to do. Don't be scared to try stuff. You only live once. Get your mind towards what you want to do and you'll achieve it. It makes it fun. You gotta take risks at times. Risks pay off.
You can't be a good writer in the States anymore because to be a good one you have to have a country where you can be poor and still eat, and still make your living standard secondary to your writing. Thoreau himself couldn't do that in the States to...
I am reminded that the children we birth do not belong to us. They belong to God. We are simply the vessel through which they arrive on this earth. We are appointed to care for and guide them; however, we must recognize when the time comes for them t...
The social sciences offer equal promise for improving human welfare; our lives can be greatly improved through a deeper understanding of individual and collective behavior. But to realize this promise, the social sciences, like the natural sciences, ...
We are, first of all, not solitary creatures and second of all, we are deeply embedded in the lives of others. It's very easy to forget that and to engage in an atomistic fallacy - where we think that all we have to do is study the individual compone...
The one thing that you have that nobody else has is you. Your voice, your mind, your story, your vision. So write and draw and build and play and dance and live as only you can." [ , University of the Arts, 134th Commencement (Philadelphia, PA, May 1...
Normally, in anything I do, I'm fairly miserable. I do it, and I get grumpy because there is a huge, vast gulf, this aching disparity, between the platonic ideal of the project that was living in my head, and the small, sad, wizened, shaking, squeaki...
We live increasingly in a world of haves and have-nots, of gated communities next to ghettos, of extreme poverty and unbelievable riches. Some enjoy rights that are completely denied to others. Relative inequalities are exploding, and the world's poo...
We live in such a consumer-based world. Everything we do, someone else has provided for us, so there is something really empowering about knowing that once I have found the right pieces of wood, I can start a fire and keep myself warm and skin an ani...
A comedian is sort of like a wild animal. It really just depends on where you catch them. Sometimes they want to cuddle up, and sometimes they'll snap at you. But for me, more often than not, if I'm talking to somebody who makes their living in comed...
You want to have enough of a profile to be able to do all the work you can, but at the same time you want to have your own space. But there are a lot of actors who achieve it, a lot of movie stars even, people like Emily Watson and Cate Blanchett. Th...
When you have a little 10-month-old who is climbing up your leg because you are their mountain - there's no nobler reason to get out of bed every day. There's no better reason to live, to make sure you provide as much guidance and as much room for th...
Life is full of joy and beauty. Look around and notice it. Notice the little butterfly, a little baby with a smile, and the white rose in the garden. Notice a drop of dew on a green leaf in the morning sun. Touch the wind, smell the rain, and feel th...
