Once I was on a plane and a woman said to me, 'Now, what's the matter with my tomatoes?' And I said, 'Well, it's a bit difficult to see from here.' She took offence and said, 'I was only trying to be friendly.'
I'm about to embark on what may be as important as an initiative as anything I do as President, trying to nudge the world in the direction of doing something serious about climate change.
I truly understand that there is a lesson in everything that happens to us. So I tried not to spend my time asking "Why did this happen to me?" but trying to figure out why I had chosen this.
Life is complicated. It wtarts before we're ready, it continues while we're still trying to figure out the point of it. And it ends long before we've worked out just what to do.
Life is too mysterious to try to map it out. I've certainly lived long enough to know it will take you places you never thought it would take you - and some of those places are kind of wonderful.
I should say that all compromise is a "stepping down" of the Truth, is trying to reduce something which cannot be reduced, and that for anyone who has understood life these compromises are impossible.
If there's no meaning in it," said the King, "that saves a world of trouble, you know, as we needn't try to find any. And yet I don't know," he went on [...]; "I seem to see some meaning in them, after all.
In the light of our culture, these are not unreasonable questions and tactics, but if once again, we try to see the lens through which we look, we can see that there is far too great an emphasis placed on the future.
Do not interrogate silence because silence is mute; do not expect anything from the gods, nor should you try to bribe them with gifts, because it is in ourselves that we must look for liberation.