When I have been travelling around to speak in different countries, I am always offered help to write about the specific climate policies in specific countries. But that is not really necessary. Because the basic problem is the same everywhere.

The major difference between a thing that might go wrong and a thing that cannot possibly go wrong is that when a thing that cannot possibly go wrong goes wrong it usually turns out to be impossible to get at and repair.

When I’m doing a book tour in the States, I’ll wake up in the room sometimes in an anonymous chain hotel, and I don’t know where I am right away. I’ll go to the window, and it doesn’t help there either, especially if you’re in an anonymous strip and it’s the usual Victoria’s Secret, Gap, Chili’s, Applebee’s.

You learn a lot from traveling around.

I would feel no hesitation in saying that it is the responsibility of a decent human being to give assistance to a child who is being attacked by a rabid dog, but I would not intend this to imply that in all imaginable circumstances one must, necessarily, act in accordance with this general responsibility.

To the lover of wilderness, Alaska is one of the most wonderful countries in the world.

If you don’t trust the pilot, don’t go.

I don’t need therapy. I’m not going to see a therapist; comedy acts as my therapy. I put my problems out there. I talk about them. I talk about everything before anybody has a chance.

A religion that takes no account of practical affairs and does not help to solve them is no religion.

There’s an urgent need to stop reacting to each immediate vexing issue in isolation. Such response often creates unanticipated second-order effects and even more problems for us.

Intellectuals solve problems, geniuses prevent them.

All my adult life people have been helping me.

You can’t talk your way out of problems you behave yourself into.

I make good music for long journeys.

By seeing London, I have seen as much of life as the world can show.

I have been – I have spoken in Bir Zeit a number of times.

My life is the road, man. I need to keep moving.

I’ve been here before and will come again, but I’m not going this trip through.

There are no problems we cannot solve together, and very few that we can solve by ourselves.

Man, I really like Vegas.

Helping those who have been struck by unforeseeable misfortunes is fundamentally different from making dependency a way of life.

I got to Africa. I got the opportunity to go and learn, not about any animal, but chimpanzees. I was living in my dream world, the forest in Gombe National Park in Tanzania. It was Tanganyika when I began.

It’s not the destination that matters. It’s the change of scene.

Each success only buys an admission ticket to a more difficult problem.

I am not deeply involved in Australian politics but I know there are prime ministers, governments around the world who are not acting responsibly in relation to climate change.

Writing and travel broaden your ass if not your mind and I like to write standing up.

I am not solicitous to examine particularly everything here, which indeed could not be done in fifty years, because my desire is to make all possible discoveries, and return to your Highnesses, if it please our Lord, in April.

A lot of people in our industry haven’t had very diverse experiences. So they don’t have enough dots to connect, and they end up with very linear solutions without a broad perspective on the problem. The broader one’s understanding of the human experience, the better design we will have.

Steak and Shake in Indianapolis is definitely the first stop when we hit that city.

All travel has its advantages. If the passenger visits better countries, he may learn to improve his own. And if fortune carries him to worse, he may learn to enjoy it.

Going to Southeast Asia for the first time and tasting that spectrum of flavors – that certainly changed my whole palate, the kind of foods I crave. A lot of the dishes I used to love became boring to me.

The genesis of a poem for me is usually a cluster of words. The only good metaphor I can think of is a scientific one: dipping a thread into a supersaturated solution to induce crystal formation. I don’t think I solve problems in my poetry; I think I uncover the problems.

Never go on trips with anyone you do not love.

If you had your life to live over again, do it overseas.

Now we have a problem in making our power credible, and Vietnam is the place.

You can never solve a problem on the level on which it was created.

In my youth, I traveled much, and I observed in different countries, that the more public provisions were made for the poor, the less they provided for themselves, and of course became poorer. And, on the contrary, the less was done for them, the more they did for themselves, and became richer.

It was wonderful to find America, but it would have been more wonderful to miss it.

Example is leadership.

It is no good getting furious if you get stuck. What I do is keep thinking about the problem but work on something else. Sometimes it is years before I see the way forward. In the case of information loss and black holes, it was 29 years.

Thanks to my reading, I have never been caught flat-footed by any situation, never at a loss for how any problem has been addressed… It doesn’t give me all the answers, but it lights what is often a dark path ahead.

Travel is fatal to prejudice, bigotry, and narrow-mindedness, and many of our people need it sorely on these accounts.

Anywhere I go, there is always an incredible crowd that follows me. In Rome, as I land at the airport, even the men kiss me. I love Rome.

If I can give you one strong piece of advice, when you go away for that romantic weekend, whatever you do, do not accept or take the upgrade to the honeymoon suite.

Paris ain’t much of a town.

The question is not, ‚Do you have a problem?‘ The question is, ‚Does the problem have you?‘

Let me define a leader. He must have vision and passion and not be afraid of any problem. Instead, he should know how to defeat it. Most importantly, he must work with integrity.

It’s useful to go out of this world and see it from the perspective of another one.

And I wound up in New Orleans for all those years and it was a great place, really a catalyst creatively.

Hate and force cannot be in just a part of the world without having an effect on the rest of it.

Narrow your life down to this moment. Your life situation may be full of problems – most life situations are – but find out if you have a problem at this moment. Do you have a problem now?

We welcome the scrutiny of the world – because what you see in America is a country that has steadily worked to address our problems and make our union more perfect.

I remember as a little girl going down to the beet fields in the Dakotas and in Nebraska and Wyoming as migrant workers when I was very, very small, like, I was, like, 5 years old, I believe. And I remember going out there, you know, traveling to these states and living in these little tarpaper shacks that they had in Wyoming.

I feel like I have lived all over the world since I get to go everywhere to film.

Should you find yourself in a chronically leaking boat, energy devoted to changing vessels is likely to be more productive than energy devoted to patching leaks.

I felt I had to solve everyone’s problems.

I would wear the blue overalls of the fieldworker and often wore round, rimless glasses known as Mazzawati teaglasses. I had a car, and I wore a chauffeur’s cap with my overalls. The pose of chauffeur was convenient because I could travel under the pretext of driving my master’s car.

We’re introducing separate rooms with double beds in all of our planes so people can actually go with their partner and have a proper night’s sleep.

The glamour of it all! New York! America!

I have only one yardstick by which I test every major problem – and that yardstick is: Is it good for America?

There have been times that I’ve wept as I’ve gone from city to city and I’ve seen how far people have wandered from God.