“Listening to people espouse beliefs different from mine is informative, not threatening, because the only thing that can alter my worldview is a new and undeniable truth, and contrary to what Jack Nicholson says in 'A Few Good Men', "I CAN handle the truth.”

“The only thing that separates any one of us from excellence is fear and the opposite of fear is faith. I am careful not to confuse excellence with perfection. Excellence I can reach for, perfection is God’s business.”

“I saw, during the midterm campaign of 2006, how difficult it was for opponents of stem cell research to run against hope. And so it was in the 2008 presidential contest. This was hope in the collective, a definition that should always apply to the expression of a people's political will. Christopher Reeve had believed in a formula: optimism + information = hope. In this case, the informing agent was us. Granted, it may all look different in six months to a year, but it is hard not to be buoyed by the desire for positive change as articulated and advanced by Barack Obama. It is okay to hope. This time the aspiration of many will not be derided as desperation by a few, as it was during the stem cell debate of '06.By the time you read this book, President Obama and the 111th Congress will have established federal funding for stem cell research. The dam has broken.Just as I'd hoped.”

“My notion of spirituality was different than it is now, but even if I'd been the most fundamentalist of believers, I would have assumed that God had better things to do than arbitrarily smite me with shaking palsy.”

“What other people think of me is not my business.”

“Chris[topher] Reeve wisely parsed the difference between optimism and hope. Unlike optimism, he said, 'Hope is the product of knowledge and the projection of where the knowledge can take us.”

“I am careful not to confuse excellence with perfection. Excellence, I can reach for; perfection is God's business.”