A great civilization is not conquered from without until it has destroyed itself from within.

The conservative who resists change is as valuable as the radical who proposes it.

My parents opened a bank account for me when I was really little, and I think I paid for some of my university education with my savings. I've always been a bit of a saver.

I like to be asked about the projects I'm working on. I like to be asked about the books I'm reading, the things I'm interested in, what's exciting me right now, or even politics. Sometimes that's fun.

I attended a middling high school in central Virginia in the mid-'90s, so there were no lofty electives to stoke my artistic sensibility - no A.P. art history or African-American studies or language courses in Mandarin or Portuguese. I lived for English, for reading.

Environmental concern is now firmly embedded in public life: in education, medicine and law; in journalism, literature and art.