“How is it that music can, without words, evoke our laughter, our fears, our highest aspirations?”

“And I thought how sad it was that, for all our sophisticated intellect, for all our noble aspirations, our aggressive behavior was not just similar in many ways to that of the chimpanzees – it was even worse. Worse because human beings have the potential to rise above their baser instincts, whereas chimpanzees probably do not.”

“What we all have discovered together, only rarely in classrooms, is that the passage of years guarantees very little in the way of answers, that ambivalence and ambiguity will follow us all the days of our lives, but that words and wit and woods and food and music will endure as sources of comfort.We have learned that surprises exhilarate, if they don’t barrage us too fast, and that the quest for the proper balances between stillness and motion, restraint and excess, sound and silence, will continue, and that too much freedom—a life too much at large…can feel at least as constricting as too little. We have learned, maybe most importantly of all, to cherish the company of those who can make us laugh, who can forgive us our shortcomings, who can restore to us or evoke in us a feeling of purpose in the face of absurdity.”

“Never downplay the power and importance of imagination. Nothing manifests in your reality without having been imagined first. Every single thing that you eventually come to life has been imagined first.”

“If this world can exist, then anything is possible.”

“You can, of course, write to inspire others… but most importantly, you must write to inspire yourself.”

“I'm a happy person. If you want to be around me, you can either choose to be happy too, or follow the signs to the nearest exit!”