"The natural resources we've depended on, if the places where they exist are not stable, our own livelihood and our health is put at risk."

“The sooner we become a multi-planet species, the safer the species is, and the stronger the guarantee that we're going to continue to evolve.”

Source : Source: www.interviewmagazine.com

“I learned from James Baldwin that one can be a novelist, essayist, and activist, combined. That being critical of one's country is a way of loving it. That travel is crucial for perspective. That faith needn't be confined to organized religion.”

Source : Source: therumpus.net

“There is nothing that more betrays a base ungenerous spirit than the giving of secret stabs to a man's reputation. Lampoons and satires that are written with wit and spirit are like poisoned darts, which not only inflict a wound, but make it incurable.”

“Be yourself, it's the best thing you can do.”

“A good story should make you laugh, and a moment later break your heart.”

“Atheism may be defined as the mental attitude which unreservedly accepts the supremacy of reason and aims at establishing a lifestyle and ethical outlook verifiable by experience and the scientific method, independent of all arbitrary assumptions of authority and creeds.”

“An impractical man--which he not only seems to be, but really is--will always be unreliable and unpredictable in his dealings with others. He will engage in actions that mean something else to him than to others, but he is at peace with himself about everything as long as he can make it all come together in a fine idea.”

“A human heart is a skein of such imperceptibly and subtly interwoven threads that even the owner of it is often himself at a loss how to unravel it.”

Source : Giovanni Ruffini (1857). “Doctor Antonio: a tale of Italy”, p.299