Quotes on Us

What fiction offers us is an intimacy shorn of the messy contingencies of human existence - gender, race, class or age. Those moments of transcendence when we exclaim 'You know exactly what I mean!' depend for much of their force on the anonymous character of the intimacy between writer and reader.

The problem with idealizing love is that it causes us to develop unrealistic expectations about what love actually is and what it can do for us.

There aren't that many things left that haven't already been done, especially with music. I'm interested in ideas that can shake us all up.

I was taught to confront things you can't avoid. Death is one of those things. To live in a society where you're trying not to look at it is stupid because looking at death throws us back into life with more vigour and energy. The fact that flowers don't last for ever makes them beautiful.

All of these things we do without children, and suddenly we don't do them anymore, and it comes home to us in a real way, that it's very different to have the responsibility of a child.

Exploration by real people inspires us.

Work is what structures adults' lives: it gives us purpose, focus, a set of responsibilities, and an identity. So when people are not participating in the labour market, all sorts of other things often start to go wrong.

Remember, we see the world not as it is but as we are. Most of us see through the eyes of our fears and our limiting beliefs and our false assumptions.

Genomics are about individuals. It's about what's specific to you, not your siblings, not your parents - each of us is totally unique. We will only see that uniqueness by drilling down to the genetic code.

We've been merging with tools since the beginning of human evolution, and arguably, that's one of the things that makes us human beings.

Above all, remember that God looks for solid virtues in us, such as patience, humility, obedience, abnegation of your own will - that is, the good will to serve Him and our neighbor in Him. His providence allows us other devotions only insofar as He sees that they are useful to us.

When the Bangladesh war happened, people in Pakistan who did not support it were called unpatriotic. My father was in the jail at that time, and a lot of those who knew my family used to call us children of a traitor.

My parents and I entered the U.S. legally, but when it was time for our visa extension, we were turned down. Returning to China meant imprisonment for my father and persecution for my family. We were days from being forced to live here illegally when we were granted political asylum. Other families are not so lucky.

At the women's march, we held signs that said, 'Today we march, tomorrow we run.' They didn't believe us, but it's coming to pass.

Asking someone to be with us turns out to be an impossibly demanding and therefore pretty mean thing to suggest to anyone we would really want the best for.

My life as an advocate for those most in need is inspired by my mother's example. She believed in the potential inherent in each of us, and that belief is the foundation of my work.

Increasingly, our decisions will be made by the algorithms that surround us. Whenever there is a big dilemma, you just ask Google what to do. And what kind of life is that?

We continue to have this illusion that things outside of us aren't driving what we think and believe, when in fact so much of what we spend our attention on is driven by decisions of thousands of engineers and product designers.

Denying the rights of women and girls is not only wrong in itself; it has a serious social and economic impact that holds us all back.

Ironically, parenting is a shame and judgment minefield precisely because most of us are wading through uncertainty and self-doubt when it comes to raising our children.

To see queer people keeping each other down makes me so sad because I've been around for a long time - I've seen the people who came before us fight for what we have right now, and they did not fight like that for us to go backwards.