What is it we want out of travel? Is it to take snapshots of ourselves in front of famous monuments, surrounded by other tourists? To eat unfamiliar food chosen from unintelligible menus? To earn frequent-flier miles? No. It's to glimpse what life is like somewhere else.
I sometimes say that I don't make anything up - obviously that's not true. But I am uninterested in writers who say that everything comes out of the imagination. I would rather be in a room with someone who is telling the story of his life, which may be exaggerated and even have lies in it, but I want to hear the true story, essentially.
If we were not all so interested in ourselves, life would be so uninteresting that none of us would be able to endure it.
It may be, it just may be, that life as we know it with its humanity is more unique than many have thought.
While we have the gift of life, it seems to me the only tragedy is to allow part of us to die - whether it is our spirit, our creativity or our glorious uniqueness.
I believe women should be independent and have their own life. But I also think that when a couple decides to have a family, things change because you need to live in unison.
I was raised Unitarian, and my mother said she took us to church so that we wouldn't get religious later in life.
I personally have always found the Unitarian faith a source of comfort and help in my daily life.
When I was growing up, so many of the important changes for African-Americans were being made in the United States Supreme Court and were being made by lawyers. I followed the court very intensely and wanted to do that for my life.
All of us have a God in us, and that God is the spirit that unites all life, everything that is on this planet.
Music, as many people have said, is the universal language. Of course points are made which make you think about things, but ultimately it makes you feel. And that's why people remember more songs that have meant something during their life than films. They start to define periods in your life, and that's kind of the beauty of it.
The heart of the theater is the play itself, how it dramatizes life to make it meaningful entertainment. To achieve depth and universality, the playwright must subject himself to intense critique, to know human character and behavior, and finally to construct art from the most mundane of human experience.
When I went to the University of California, Santa Barbara, in 2002, I decided I wanted to leave my car at home and create an experiment with my own life. I'd only be able to find creative solutions to transportation if I felt the pain of trying to get to downtown at 10 o'clock at night.
I am unjust, but I can strive for justice. My life's unkind, but I can vote for kindness. I, the unloving, say life should be lovely. I, that am blind, cry out against my blindness.
Only once in my life was I on the edge of incivility. I do not like to be unkind.
Being in the latter stages of life means the morning is unkind to the reflection. It takes a few hours for the creases to fall out. By about 4 P.M., I look quite nice.
'Hamlet' is one of the most dangerous things ever set down on paper. All the big, unknowable questions like what it is to be a human being; the difference between sanity and insanity; the meaning of life and death; what's real and not real. All these subjects can literally drive you mad.
The most useful piece of learning for the uses of life is to unlearn what is untrue.
When you are grateful - when you can see what you have - you unlock blessings to flow in your life.
I know what it is to feel unloved, to want revenge, to make mistakes, to suffer disappointment, yet also to find the courage to go forward in life.
