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Previous ideals and values undermine themselves and collapse into nothing precisely as a result of the effort to make them consummate and exhaustive.

These influences of my young childhood were greatest: 1, the mountain landscape, 2, my father the impossible idealist, and 3, the upringing of a closely-knit Christian home.

Judicial judgment must take deep account...of the day before yesterday in order that yesterday may not paralyze today.

Something traumatic happened to me when I was younger. I was with this old black woman, and she was very wise, very Alice Walker, The Color Purple...she looked at me and she says, "Baby...you know I used to be able to fly but I can't fly no more, baby. But baby, you...? You too fat to fly.

At forty, I had attained the unperturbed mind.

Kareem Nazir: All men die, my friend. But Allah says its what we do before we die, that counts.

I shall not sing a May song.
A May song should be gay.
I'll wait until November
And sing a song of gray.

Bassam: Feeling hydrated? Never had a bath before. [shakes the water off] Lost 2 pounds in dirt alone.

You cannot seek Destruction and return unscathed.

The vagrant moon trailed through the town and I tagged along, nurturing within me unfulfillable dreams and dissonant songs.

I do take law very seriously, deeply seriously, because fragile as reason is and limited as law is as the institutionalized medium of reason, that's all we have standing between us and the tyranny of mere will and the cruelty of unbridled, undisciplined feeling.

I was already singing by the time I was six years old. My neighbors would ask me to sing at festivities—marriages, baptisms, etc.—and they would give me presents. In 1973 [when I was 15], I went to the Institute for the Young Blind in Mali to learn Braille. When I was there I taught other people how to sing and dance.

Amazing fine tuning occurs in the laws that make this [complexity] possible. Realization of the complexity of what is accomplished makes it very difficult not to use the word 'miraculous' without taking a stand as to the ontological status of the word.

Being a functioning alcoholic is kind of like being a paraplegic lap dancer: You can do it, just not as well as the others, really.

I didn't ask to be secretary of balloon doggies, the balloon doggies demanded it!