Most of the book deals with things we already know yet never learn.
Extinction catches Man by surprise because no one can even imagine that such a catastrophe can happen to an intelligent species.
A mathematician is an individual who calls himself a 'physicist' and does 'physics' and physical experiments with abstract concepts.
You have a dramatic portion of your television program and you treat it dramatically, and then you have a comedic portion of your program, and you treat it differently. Why do you change who are between the two pieces? You're the same person. Just go...
I've realized why I don't tell the truth in interviews. It's because they're printed months later, and you change so quickly - you have new thoughts, new everything - so people are reading an old version of you.
Never die easy. Why run out of bounds and die easy? Make that linebacker pay. It carries into all facets of your life. It's okay to lose, to die, but don't die without trying, without giving it your best.
The artist forges himself to the others, midway between the beauty he cannot do without and the community he cannot tear himself away from. That is why true artists scorn nothing: they are obliged to understand rather than to judge.
Being a Christian means accepting Christ as your savior, your God. That's why you are called a 'Christian.' If you remove Christ, there's only 'ian' and that means 'I am nothing.'
There is always the danger that we may just do the work for the sake of the work. This is where the respect and the love and the devotion come in - that we do it to God, to Christ, and that's why we try to do it as beautifully as possible.
My first serious girlfriend, when I was 16, was Mormon. I went to her house for 'family home evening,' and I was like, 'Why aren't you people ignoring each other and watching television?'
We could in fact transport a person, say a kid who didn't know what it was like to be in a civil rights march. We could actually take you into that experience, so that you could better appreciate what happened and why it happened.
The bullied straight kid goes home to a shoulder to cry on and support and can talk freely about his experience at school and why he's being bullied. I couldn't go home and open up to my parents.
But it's the particularity of a place, the physical experience of being in a place, that makes it onto the page. That's why I don't just do library research. I very rarely write about somewhere I haven't been.
The act of writing... is the act of trying to understand why my opinion is what it is. And ultimately, I think that's the same experience the reader has when they pick up one of my books.
That's why, to experience that, you know for a fact that a human being is capable of so much more, because to go to that place and to step outside yourself and observe yourself do these things, while the rest of the world is moving in slow motion, is...
In my experience, there is a very good reason why a good-looking young woman of around 20 is willing to go out with a man over 15 years her senior - she's nuts.
When they call the slightest spending reductions 'painful', we will say 'If government spending prevents pain, why are we suffering so much of it?' And 'If you want to experience real pain, just stay on the track we are on.'
I think being a parent is the most challenging thing you do. That's why we're here. It's at the heart of what it is to be a human being. It's the ultimate experience because it questions everything about who you are. But it's difficult.
Recently, I was asked if I was going to fire an employee who made a mistake that cost the company $600,000. No, I replied, I just spent $600,000 training him. Why would I want somebody to hire his experience?
The way America sees Mexico, if they have any sense of it, is like Taco Bell. Our countries are neighbors, and the only hard food to get in America is true Mexican. It's impossible to find, even in L.A. Why is that?
That's why I wanted to be part of this AIDS Project Los Angeles party. We help raise funds for those who are having a tough time with some very basic necessities, like shelter, food, and medical care.
