Who are we? We find that we live on an insignificant planet of a humdrum star lost in a galaxy tucked away in some forgotten corner of a universe in which there are far more galaxies than people.

I try to look on all the great things God’s done, and not focus on the negative. It’s a perspective.

In all matters of opinion, our adversaries are insane.

No object is so beautiful that, under certain conditions, it will not look ugly.

When I see a story, I ask: is this something I’d like to be in? Is this something I’d like to see? And if I’d like to see it, would I like to tell it?

You never really understand a person until you consider things from his point of view.

It is the stars, The stars above us, govern our conditions.

Keep in mind that no matter how perfectly you get your life in order, you will never be rid of all your problems. Problems are a way of life, always have been, always will be. But how you elect to view those problems is all up to you.

What one fool can understand, another can.

Older people sit down and ask, ‚What is it?‘ but the boy asks, ‚What can I do with it?‘.

An adventure is only an inconvenience rightly considered. An inconvenience is only an adventure wrongly considered.

Every day I try to be in communication with the universe in an unconscious way.

My life as a child did not prepare me for the fact that the world is full of cruel and bitter things.

Look at the sky. We are not alone. The whole universe is friendly to us and conspires only to give the best to those who dream and work.

I always have an optimistic view, no matter what it is.

Fantasy is a necessary ingredient in living, it’s a way of looking at life through the wrong end of a telescope, and that enables you to laugh at life’s realities.

Getting older is no problem. You just have to live long enough.

The human race may be the only intelligent beings in the galaxy.

Death to me means nothing as long as I can die fast.

Experience is not what happens to you; it’s what you do with what happens to you.

My justification is that most people my age spend a lot of time thinking about what they’re going to do for the next five or ten years. The time they spend thinking about their life, I just spend drinking.

When it comes to life the critical thing is whether you take things for granted or take them with gratitude.

For goodness sake, will they hear, will white people hear what we are trying to say? Please, all we are asking you to do is to recognize that we are humans, too.

When we contemplate the whole globe as one great dewdrop, striped and dotted with continents and islands, flying through space with other stars all singing and shining together as one, the whole universe appears as an infinite storm of beauty.

Man is condemned to be free; because once thrown into the world, he is responsible for everything he does.

There are no big problems, there are just a lot of little problems.

Success is not greedy, as people think, but insignificant. That is why it satisfies nobody.

Man the individual consoles himself for his passing with the thought of the offspring or the works which he leaves behind.

All History is current; all injustice continues on some level, somewhere in the world.

The Earth is a very small stage in a vast cosmic arena.

Who is rich? He that rejoices in his portion.

Not only is there but one way of doing things rightly, but there is only one way of seeing them, and that is, seeing the whole of them.

Sometimes we look back and 10 years from now we think, ‚Boy, those were great old days.‘ Well, you know, we’re living in the good old days.

Neither a man nor a crowd nor a nation can be trusted to act humanely or to think sanely under the influence of a great fear.

I consider the fact that thousands of children die each day from starvation and a lack of medicine a crisis for humanity and a problem we must collectively attempt to solve.

I have a dogmatic certainty: God is in every person’s life. God is in everyone’s life. Even if the life of a person has been a disaster, even if it is destroyed by vices, drugs or anything else – God is in this person’s life. You can – you must – try to seek God in every human life.

You must not lose faith in humanity. Humanity is an ocean; if a few drops of the ocean are dirty, the ocean does not become dirty.

Science sent the Hubble telescope out into space, so it could capture light and the absence thereof, from the very beginning of time. And the telescope really did that. So now we know that there was once absolutely nothing, such a perfect nothing that there wasn’t even nothing or once.

Do you know the only value life has is what life puts on itself?

When I was 18, I thought that, to be a romantic, you couldn’t live past 30.

Evolution can go to hell as far as I am concerned. What a mistake we are. We have mortally wounded this sweet life-supporting planet – the only one in the whole Milky Way – with a century of transportation whoopee.

My goal is simple. It is a complete understanding of the universe, why it is as it is and why it exists at all.

Words are only painted fire; a look is the fire itself.

Every day that is born into the world comes like a burst of music and rings the whole day through, and you make of it a dance, a dirge, or a life march, as you will.

The absurd depends as much on man as on the world. For the moment, it is all that links them together.

Wherever the art of medicine is loved, there is also a love of humanity.

Is the babe young? When I behold it, it seems more venerable than the oldest man.

If we hope for what we are not likely to possess, we act and think in vain, and make life a greater dream and shadow than it really is.

There is no sadder sight than a young pessimist.

A truer image of the world, I think, is obtained by picturing things as entering into the stream of time from an eternal world outside, than from a view which regards time as the devouring tyrant of all that is.

In nature, nothing is perfect and everything is perfect. Trees can be contorted, bent in weird ways, and they’re still beautiful.

It’s lack that gives us inspiration. It’s not fullness.

I think the tiniest little thing can change the course of your day, which can change the course of your year, which can change who you are.

In a magazine, one can get – from cover to cover – 15 to 20 different ideas about life and how to live it.

Age merely shows what children we remain.

As human beings, we are all not conducting just one narrative but many narratives all at the same time.

A squirrel dying in front of your house may be more relevant to your interests right now than people dying in Africa.

What difference does it make how much you have? What you do not have amounts to much more.

I’m rather kind of old school, thinking that when an artist does his work, it’s no longer his… I just see what people make of it.

Great talents are the most lovely and often the most dangerous fruits on the tree of humanity. They hang upon the most slender twigs that are easily snapped off.

In order to understand the world, one has to turn away from it on occasion.