"Death doesn't affect the living because it has not happened yet. Death doesn't concern the dead because they have ceased to exist."

"Old age is ready to undertake tasks that youth shirked because they would take too long."

"Any nation that thinks more of its ease and comfort than its freedom will soon lose its freedom and the ironical thing about it is that it will lose its ease and comfort too."

"You are not angry with people when you laugh at them. Humor teaches tolerance."

"I can't really criticize the Tea Party people, because I came into the White House pretty much on the same basis that they have become popular. That is dissatisfaction with the way things are going in Washington and disillusionment and disencouragement about the government."

"The best thing that ever happened to me is that nothing happened in writing. I ended up working for engineering companies, and that's where I found my material, in the everyday struggle between capitalism and grace. Being broke and tired, you don't come home your best self."

"I think that's one of the most difficult things in any marriage - in order to build anything, you must be together. You can't build anything over the telephone."

"My father was an autodidact. It wasn't a middle-class house. Shopkeepers are aspirant. He paid for me to go to private school. He was denied an education - he had a horrible childhood. He got a place at a grammar school and wasn't allowed to go."