Stairway to Wisdom”) David Brooks detailed the needed ingredients to gaining a deep understanding of a social problem, beginning with the data and moving on to first-hand accounts. The highest rung on his stairway, though, went beyond those: “Empathy opens you up to absorb the good and the bad. Love impels you not just to observe but to seek union—to think as another thinks and feel as another feels.

We all learn lessons in life. Some stick, some don't. I have always learned more from rejection and failure than from acceptance and success.

You can get so confused that you'll start in to race down long wiggled roads at a break-necking pace and grind on for miles across weirdish wild space, headed, I fear, toward a most useless place. The Waiting Place.

I have learned from my experiences in this industry that there is absolutely no way to control people's opinions on your performance in your movie. You go out there, promote your film and hope people like the work you did.

Whosoever is determined to seek guidance and follow a path of right conduct must search for a shaykh from amongst those who have realization, one who follows a path methodically, who has abandoned his passions, and who has firmly established his feet in the service of his Lord.

You can't change the past, but you can ruin the present by worrying about the future.