I am involved in a freedom ride protesting the loss of the minority rights belonging to the few remaining earthbound stars. All we demanded was our right to twinkle.

Freedom is never voluntarily given by the oppressor it must be demanded by the oppressed.

Freedom is never more than one generation away from extinction. We didn't pass it to our children in the bloodstream. It must be fought for protected and handed on for them to do the same.

On the Day of Atonement Jews are commanded to seek forgiveness from the people we have hurt.

I fear my enthusiasm flags when real work is demanded of me.

I have gained this from philosophy: that I do without being commanded what others do only from fear of the law.

Why has it seemed that the only way to protect the environment is with heavy-handed government regulation?

For-profit higher education is today a booming industry feeding on the student loans handed out to the desperate.

Abraham Lincoln comes from nothing has no education no money lives in the middle of nowhere on the frontier. And despite the fact that he suffers one tragedy and one setback after another through sheer force of will he becomes something extraordinary: not only the president but the person who almost single-handedly united the country.

Dreams have always expanded our understanding of reality by challenging our boundaries of the real of the possible.

I'm left handed but my dad taught me to play guitar right-handed.

Now that I'm a dad I'm practicing what I call 'one- handed cooking ' because I've got something more important in my other arm. I'm whipping up lots of frittatas and omelets.

Meyer and I have a bit in common because we're both left-handed. I think it's great that he seeks out that advice because he's not too cool or too uncomfortable to ask for it.

Because I believe that humans are computers I conjectured that computers like people can have left- and right-handed versions.

I was born left-handed but I was made to use my other hand. When I was writing 'Famished Road ' which was very long I got repetitive stress syndrome. My right wrist collapsed so I started using my left hand. The prose I wrote with my left hand came out denser so later on I had to change it.

Imagine if the pension funds and endowments that own much of the equity in our financial services companies demanded that those companies revisit the way mortgages were marketed to those without adequate skills to understand the products they were being sold. Management would have to change the way things were done.

We like to think about how smart we are. But I think talent as a writer is hard-wired in it's all there at least the basic elements of it. You can't change it any more than you can choose whether to be right handed or left handed.