If heaven is understood more as God's space on earth than as an ethereal region apart from the essential reality we know, then what happens on earth matters even more than we think, for the Christian life becomes a continuation of the unfolding work of Jesus, who will one day return to set the world to rights.

Environmental concern is a little like dieting or paying off credit-card debt - an episodically terrific idea that burns brightly and then seems to fade when we realize there's a reason we need to diet or pay down our debt. The reason is that it's really, really hard, and too many of us in too many spheres of life choose the easy over the hard.

If I were not African, I wonder whether it would be clear to me that Africa is a place where the people do not need limp gifts of fish but sturdy fishing rods and fair access to the pond. I wonder whether I would realize that while African nations have a failure of leadership, they also have dynamic people with agency and voices.

Lasting love has to be built on mutual regard and respect. It is about seeing the other person. I am very interested in relationships and, when I watch couples, sometimes I can sense a blindness has set in. They have stopped seeing each other. It is not easy to see another person.

I think people are frightened of saying what they think, and I think that's a bad thing for society.

I am a bit of a fundamentalist when it comes to black women's hair. Hair is hair - yet also about larger questions: self-acceptance, insecurity and what the world tells you is beautiful. For many black women, the idea of wearing their hair naturally is unbearable.

I ask questions. I watch the world. And what I have discovered is that the parts of my fiction that people most tell me are 'unbelievable' are those that are most closely based on the real, those least diluted by my imagination.

I have my father's lopsided mouth. When I smile, my lips slope to one side. My doctor sister calls it my cerebral palsy mouth. I am very much a daddy's girl, and even though I would rather my smile wasn't crooked, there is something moving for me about having a mouth exactly like my father's.

Don't come home a failure.

The great trouble with baseball today is that most of the players are in the game for the money and that's it, not for the love of it, the excitement of it, the thrill of it.

Baseball is a red-blooded sport for red-blooded men. It's no pink tea, and mollycoddles had better stay out. It's a struggle for supremacy, a survival of the fittest.

I regret to this day that I never went to college. I feel I should have been a doctor.

Every great batter works on the theory that the pitcher is more afraid of him than he is of the pitcher.

The crowd makes the ballgame.

Failure? Scared to death of it.

I've dated some women who have turned me on to some funny things that are strange for men to actually do, but these things have become part of my process. I think the things I do for my appearance help make me look better. I even colour my hair because I like how it makes me look.

With the evolution of technology, kids really need to be computer-savvy.

You have to look at the history of the Middle East in particular. It has been one of failure and frustration, of feudalism and tribalism.

Smokey Robinson writes the heartfelt songs, whereas it was my job to write the songs about weakness and failure in love.

We're all just animals. That's all we are, and everything else is just an elaborate justification of our instincts. That's where music comes from. And romantic poetry. And bad novels.

Women hear rhythm differently than men.

My story as an artist has been about trial and error. It's been about artist development, character building, struggle, happiness and failure, family, and music.

I grew up in Oxnard, CA, and I went to a church called St. Paul, where I was playing drums. My mom had a strawberry company. The whole town of Oxnard is basically built on produce, and more particularly, strawberries.

Growing up in a house where there was a lot of different musical influences - my mom listens to soul stuff and Top 40, my sisters would listen to hip-hop - and the church, I grew up listening to a lot of gospel stuff. So I think that plays a role in how I make music now because my music has a lot of range. I don't just do one thing.

Not everything is going to be handed to you just because you're talented with a big smile. Sometimes you just gotta get out and shoot jumpers for hours and hours and hours. That's something I didn't really get a grasp on until way later, waking up early and treating it like a job if you're serious about it. Get the freak up and, you know, work.

I've always believed that it's important to show a new look periodically. Predictability can lead to failure.

I have always believed that it's important to show a new look periodically. Predictability can lead to failure.

If you can provide the funding and you get the leadership, you'll have a competitive team.

Natural gas is a better transportation fuel than gasoline, so if that's the case, it's cheaper, it's cleaner and it's a domestic resource.

The cheapest natural gas in the world is in the United States.

Once you can accept failure, you can have fun and success.

To all the kids out there: Follow your dream. Believe in your dream. Because dreams do come true.

Failure is always an option.

Prayer doesn't work because someone out there is listening, it works because someone in here is listening. I've paid attention. I've pictured what I want to happen in my life. I've meditated extensively on my family, my future, my past actions and what did and didn't work for me about them.

The idea of an ordered and elegant universe is a lovely one. One worth clinging to. But you don't need religion to appreciate the ordered existence. It's not just an idea, it's reality. We're discovering the hidden orders of the universe every day.

It's sort of a mental attitude about critical thinking and curiosity. It's about mindset of looking at the world in a playful and curious and creative way.

In the spirit of science, there really is no such thing as a 'failed experiment.' Any test that yields valid data is a valid test.

We didn't set out to be educators or even scientists, and we don't purport that what we do is real science but we're demonstrating a methodology by which one can engage and satisfy your curiosity.

Audiences of critical thinkers are my favorite kinds of audiences. There are jokes I tell in the show that don't get laughs unless I am in front of an audience of critical thinkers. Put me in front of a crowd of science teachers or astronauts! The guileless aren't our audience - it's the critical thinkers we love.

The Internet is probably the most important technological advancement of my lifetime. Its strength lies in its open architecture and its ability to allow a framework where all voices can be heard.

There's this group online that I frequent. It's a group of prop crazies just like me called the Replica Props Forum, and it's people who trade, make and travel in information about movie props.

What we perceive as a failure may simply be our inner being's way of telling us that we are ready to move to a new level of growth.

Good health is not something we can buy. However, it can be an extremely valuable savings account.

Looking after my health today gives me a better hope for tomorrow.

Healthy people live with their world.

There are so many ways to heal. Arrogance may have a place in technology, but not in healing. I need to get out of my own way if I am to heal.

Whole areas of knowledge and information have been defined into nonexistence because the system cannot know, understand, control, or measure them.

Trusting our intuition often saves us from disaster.

I realize that humor isn't for everyone. It's only for people who want to have fun, enjoy life, and feel alive.

In God's world, for those who are in earnest, there is no failure. No work truly done, no word earnestly spoken, no sacrifice freely made, was ever made in vain.