“Every heart is much the same, We tell ourselves down here, The same chambers fed by veins, The same maze of love and fear.”

“If there is a will there is an A.”

“Most of all: There's uncertainty in our lives. At night, you just have to go to sleep and have faith in the fairly large certainty that you'll wake up in the morning. Fear only has as much power as we give it space.”

“Music does bring people together. It allows us to experience the same emotions. People everywhere are the same in heart and spirit. No matter what language we speak, what color we are, the form of our politics or the expression of our love and our faith, music proves: We are the same.”

“...that's what a book should do. It should tie you up, it should work you up, make you think, make you see, make you feel extra happy and sorrowful, extra nervous and bold. It must be dream laden, scheme sodden, soul shaking. And it must do all of this as mysteriously as a left-handed curveball coming at your head, twisting and spinning and making you duck until, at the very end, it magically crosses home plate, with such grace and command that it humbles, crumbles, and amazes you.”

“We have become a nation not of citizens but of consumers.”

“But it is the same thing we are all seeing,Our world. Go after it,Go get it boy, says the man holding the stick.Eat, says the hunger, and we plunge blindly in again,Into the chamber behind the thought”