We all dream we do not understand our dreams yet we act as if nothing strange goes on in our sleep minds strange at least by comparison with the logical purposeful doings of our minds when we are awake.

Wherever there is a design that is highly successful in a broad range of similar environments it is apt to emerge again and again independently - the phenomenon known in biology as convergent evolution. I call these designs 'good tricks.'

For two years nobody talked about anything other than the name arrangement. There was no fund-raising and no progress being made on construction and design.

I write the way you might arrange flowers. Not every try works but each one launches another. Every constraint even dullness frees up a new design.

It's all in how you arrange the thing... the careful balance of the design is the motion.

I couldn't have foreseen all the good things that have followed my mother's death. The renewed energy the surprising sweetness of grief. The tenderness I feel for strangers on walkers. The deeper love I have for my siblings and friends. The desire to play the mandolin. The gift of a visitation.

How strange this fear of death is! We are never frightened at a sunset.

I never really got on that well with Yoko anyway. Strangely enough I only started to get to know her after John's death.

People fear death even more than pain. It's strange that they fear death. Life hurts a lot more than death. At the point of death the pain is over. Yeah I guess it is a friend.

Death most resembles a prophet who is without honor in his own land or a poet who is a stranger among his people.

I don't really talk about my personal life. It's a strange and funny and weird thing. Sometimes you have a conversation with someone and the paparazzi snaps a picture of you and people decide you're dating. If I try to answer everything people say I would be up all night.

I like the bad-boy types. Generally the guy I'm attracted to is the guy in the club with all the tattoos and nail polish. He's usually the lead singer in a punk band and plays guitar. But my serious boyfriends are relatively clean-cut nice guys. So it's strange.

The older people that one admires seem to be fearless. They go right out into the world. It's astounding. Maybe they can't see or they can't hear but they walk out into the street and take life as it comes. They're models of courage in a strange way.

The strangest most generous and proudest of all virtues is true courage.

Let's drink to the spirit of gallantry and courage that made a strange Heaven out of unbelievable Hell and let's drink to the hope that one day this country of ours which we love so much will find dignity and greatness and peace again.

I hated the idea of a high school sweetheart. Growing up oh my God it just made me sick. I wanted to have a range of cool boyfriends. I wanted to travel around and date these interesting men. Then it just happened. You fall in love.

Everybody hangs out with everybody which is very strange for a cast this large and this young. We're all cool and down to earth and not caught up in this maniacal business at all... . Everybody really really likes everybody else.

My strangest media moment a photo session they all had dressed up like 50 gangsters. That was pretty cool. We have to get some more of those kind of photos sometimes.

Strange about parents. We have such easy access to them and such daunting problems of communication.

Making movies is not rocket science. It's about relationships and communication and strangers coming together to see if they can get along harmoniously productively and creatively. That's a challenge. When it works it's fantastic and will lift you up. When it doesn't work it's almost just as fascinating.

It is not strange... to mistake change for progress.

It is well for people who think to change their minds occasionally in order to keep them clean. For those who do not think it is best at least to rearrange their prejudices once in a while.

I can't change overnight into a serious literary author. You can't compare apples to oranges. William Faulkner was a great literary genius. I am not.

The range of what we think and do is limited by what we fail to notice. And because we fail to notice that we fail to notice there is little we can do to change until we notice how failing to notice shapes our thoughts and deeds.