If you stay friendly with monsters you can find cracks in their armor to exploit. Shut them out and they can kill you without a second thought. I reminded myself of this over and over.

It always bothers me when I hear Rwanda’s genocide described as a product of “ancient tribal hatreds.” I think this is an easy way for Westerners to dismiss the whole thing as a regrettable but pointless bloodbath that happens to primitive brown people.

Pastors started killing their church members and church members killed pastors. Husbands killed wives. It’s a situation no one can describe.

If anybody tried to threaten me I would simply look him in the eye and ask him in a firm but friendly voice, “Why?” The bully would have no choice but to engage me verbally, and this made violence next to impossible. I learned that it is very difficult to fight someone with whom you are already talking.

This is why I say that the individual’s most potent weapon is a stubborn belief in the triumph of common decency.

I think I’m a happy man, and I’m a blessed man. I have been able to adjust to any situation, whatever it was, in my life.

Our days are so few, our existences so complicated. As long as we’re breathing we shouldn’t further complicate our lives.

If we want to change things, we must first change ourselves. If we want to play – if we want to change the world – we must first show up on the field to score.

I think I'm a happy man, and I'm a blessed man. I have been able to adjust to any situation, whatever it was, in my life.

Facts are almost irrelevant to most people. We make decisions based on emotion and then justify them later with whatever facts we can scrounge up in our defense.