"It is easy and dismally enervating to think of opposition as merely perverse or actually evil-far more invigorating to see it as essential for honing the mind and as a positive good in itself. For the day that moral issues cease to be fought over is the day the word 'human' disappears from the race."

"If I play a villain, I try to find his lightness and his good side. And if I play a hero or a good guy, I'll try to find his darkness or his flaws. Because I don't believe in good and evil. I believe in grays."

"We form our impression not globally, by placing ourselves in the broadest possible context, but locally, by comparing ourselves to people in the same boat as ourselves."

"Get specific sooner and reap many rewards. The specific detail or example proves the general conclusion, not the reverse. The more specific you are abut anything the more clear you become, for yourself and in telling others. Thus you reduce the chance of others misunderstanding you. And you become more compelling, credible and memorable."

"The newspaper journalists like to believe the worst; they can sell more papers that way, as one of them told me himself; for even upstanding and respectable people dearly love to read ill of others."