“We don't choose our talents; but we needn't hide them in a napkin because they are not just what we want.”

“But in life we don't usually get to choose the time of our defining moments. We just have to stand and face them when they come, no matter what sort of a state we're in.”

“An option hides where we don't want it to hide.”

“What we really want to do is to be left alone. We don't want Negroes around. We don't need Negroes around. We're not asking— you know, we don't want to have them, you know, for our culture. We simply want our own country and our own society. That's in no way exploitive at all. We want our own society, our own nation….”

“It made me wonder how many times we forgive just because we don't want to lose someone, even if they don't deserve our forgiveness.”

“Chosen responsibility is where the human race needs to be headed. And to do this, we choose what we want to become responsible for because it would make us feel good to do it, not because it would make us feel like a good person to do what we don't want to do.”

“Because we are the cause of our environmental problems, we are the ones in control of them, and we can choose or not choose to stop causing them and start solving them. The future is up for grabs, lying in our own hands. We don’t need new technologies to solve our problems; while new technologies can make some contribution, for the most part we "just" need the political will to apply solutions already available.”

“We don't become geisha because we want our lives to be happy; we become geisha because we have no choice.”

“We should always choose our books as God chooses our friends, just a bit beyond us, so that we have to do our level best to keep up with them.”

“The answer is that we don't choose our freaks, they choose us.”