When you're a kid you have these big ideas and these big dreams to make a change or maybe you feel like you can't make a difference.

I couldn't help but to think back to my classmates at Thomas Jefferson High School in San Antonio. They had the same talent the same brains the same dreams as the folks we sat with at Stanford and Harvard. I realized the difference wasn't one of intelligence or drive. The difference was opportunity.

Going meat-free can make a huge difference. Studies show that vegetarians are on average 10 to 20 pounds lighter than meat-eaters and that a vegetarian diet reduces our risk of heart disease by 40 percent and adds seven or more years to our lifespan.

If there is a gay uniform the differences are in how each man coordinates the details: the brand and cut of the jeans the design of belts and boots the haircut the number and size of earrings.

The universe we observe has precisely the properties we should expect if there is at bottom no design no purpose no evil no good nothing but blind pitiless indifference.

The difference between art about death and actual death is that one's a celebration and the other's a dull fact.

'Hamlet' is one of the most dangerous things ever set down on paper. All the big unknowable questions like what it is to be a human being the difference between sanity and insanity the meaning of life and death what's real and not real. All these subjects can literally drive you mad.

But there is a difference here: When Jewish children are murdered Arabs celebrate the deed. The death of an Arab child is no cause for celebration in Israel.

There is no fundamental difference between the preparation for death and the practice of dying and spiritual practice leading to enlightenment.

Not the torturer will scare me nor the body's final fall nor the barrels of death's rifles nor the shadows on the wall nor the night when to the ground the last dim star of pain is hurled but the blind indifference of a merciless unfeeling world.