Good Viking genes, being vegetarian and having rowdy dogs and kids definitely keep me in shape. Not eating meat gives me the energy I need to keep up with work, family and travel - I'm very active.

I'm a soccer mom. I'm T-ball, soccer, karate, homework, keeping them on their schedules. I love being the snack mom, when I get to bring the cut oranges. I have one of those coolers with wheels. I'm at every game, every practice, sitting on my blanket. I love it.

I don't know if women are meant to run, especially after having kids.

I don't do the gym and I don't diet. I'm vegetarian but I don't diet.

Tattoos are like stories - they're symbolic of the important moments in your life. Sitting down, talking about where you got each tattoo and what it symbolizes, is really beautiful.

Once you go inside and weed through the muck, you will find the real beauty, the truth about yourself.

When we shift our perception, our experience changes.

I love the fact that we are surrounded by this spectacular natural beauty that routinely strikes us dead. Hikers walk off into the woods and are never seen again. And still we tug on our fleece and skip off into the wilderness, not a care in the world.

You know what I hate? I hate people who give me plants. The whole giving someone plants - it's like giving someone a pet. I'm giving you responsibility, I'm giving you a thing that you now have to take care of for, like, a year until it dies, and then I'm giving you sadness and guilt.

Real beauty is to be true to oneself. That's what makes me feel good.

There's a difference between beauty and charm. A beautiful woman is one I notice. A charming woman is one who notices me.

Beauty, sweet love, is like the morning dew, Whose short refresh upon tender green, Cheers for a time, but till the sun doth show And straight is gone, as it had never been.

By adversity are wrought the greatest works of admiration, and all the fair examples of renown, out of distress and misery are grown.

The stars that have most glory have no rest.

Custom, that is before all law; Nature, that is above all art.

The world is a crazy, beautiful, ugly complicated place, and it keeps moving on from crisis to strangeness to beauty to weirdness to tragedy. The caravan keeps moving on, and the job of the longform writer or filmmaker or radio broadcaster is to stop - is to pause - and when the caravan goes away, that's when this stuff comes.

I don't see the desert as barren at all; I see it as full and ripe. It doesn't need to be flattered with rain. It certainly needs rain, but it does with what it has, and creates amazing beauty.

When you play a sax, that saxophone is irreverent. It's noisy; it's a trickster... you cannot hide the saxophone in your hands, so it's a good teacher.

Beauty in things exists in the mind which contemplates them.

Beauty, whether moral or natural, is felt, more properly than perceived.

Accuracy is, in every case, advantageous to beauty, and just reasoning to delicate sentiment. In vain would we exalt the one by depreciating the other.

A propensity to hope and joy is real riches; one to fear and sorrow real poverty.

There is not to be found, in all history, any miracle attested by a sufficient number of men, of such unquestioned good sense, education and learning, as to secure us against all delusion in themselves.

Generally speaking, the errors in religion are dangerous; those in philosophy only ridiculous.

The Christian religion not only was at first attended with miracles, but even at this day cannot be believed by any reasonable person without one.

A man acquainted with history may, in some respect, be said to have lived from the beginning of the world, and to have been making continual additions to his stock of knowledge in every century.

Nothing endears so much a friend as sorrow for his death. The pleasure of his company has not so powerful an influence.

Human Nature is the only science of man; and yet has been hitherto the most neglected.

Heaven and hell suppose two distinct species of men, the good and the bad. But the greatest part of mankind float betwixt vice and virtue.

Scholastic learning and polemical divinity retarded the growth of all true knowledge.

The heights of popularity and patriotism are still the beaten road to power and tyranny.

Men often act knowingly against their interest.

Truth springs from argument amongst friends.

Any person seasoned with a just sense of the imperfections of natural reason, will fly to revealed truth with the greatest avidity.

Belief is nothing but a more vivid, lively, forcible, firm, steady conception of an object, than what the imagination alone is ever able to attain.

This avidity alone, of acquiring goods and possessions for ourselves and our nearest friends, is insatiable, perpetual, universal, and directly destructive of society.

A purpose, an intention, a design, strikes everywhere even the careless, the most stupid thinker.

Our hearts were drunk with a beauty Our eyes could never see.

We dwell in the house of the body, but its perfection and intricate life are the work of a wisdom which never relaxes dominion over a single cell.

The relation of landlord and tenant is not an ideal one, but any relations in a social order will endure if there is infused into them some of that spirit of human sympathy which qualifies life for immortality.

Any relations in a social order will endure, if there is infused into them some of that spirit of human sympathy which qualifies life for immortality.

We have the universe to roam in in imagination. It is our virtue to be infinitely varied. The worst tyranny is uniformity.

We have been educated into believing someone else's concept of the deity, and someone else's standard of beauty. You have the right to practice any religion and politics in a way that best suits your freedom, your dignity, and your understanding. And once you do that, you don't apologize.

Religion is the organization of spirituality into something that became the hand maiden of conquerors. Nearly all religions were brought to people and imposed on people by conquerors, and used as the framework to control their minds.

My loving sister Mary has always shared the pain and pleasure of my heartbeat in a unique and special way. We have sung our sad and warm songs together.

History is not everything, but it is a starting point. History is a clock that people use to tell their political and cultural time of day. It is a compass they use to find themselves on the map of human geography. It tells them where they are but, more importantly, what they must be.

I want to make it clear that the black race did not come to the United States culturally empty-handed. The role and importance of ethnic history is in how well it teaches a people to use their own talents, take pride in their own history and love their own memories.

The acceptance of the facts of African-American history and the African-American historian as a legitimate part of the academic community did not come easily. Slavery ended and left its false images of black people intact.

When I was able to go to school in my early years, my third grade teacher, Ms. Harris, convinced me that one day I would be a writer. I heard her, but I knew that I had to leave Georgia, and unlike my friend Ray Charles, I did not go around with 'Georgia on My Mind.'

Powerful people cannot afford to educate the people that they oppress, because once you are truly educated, you will not ask for power. You will take it.