And even with the book closed, the voices do not stop--there are echoes and reverberations that seem to leap off the pages and mischievously leave the novel tingling in our ears.

...these sleepless nights, when oddly enough my concentration was high, fueled perhaps by the effort to ignore the all-engrossing threat of bombs and rockets.

The truth is that James, like many other great writers and artists, had chosen his own loyalties and nationality. His true country, his home, was that of the imagination.

My toe as a lethal weapon!

I went on and on, and as I continued, I became more righteous in my indignation. It was the sort of anger one gets high on, the kind one takes home to show off to family and friends.

She looked not so much composed as drawn inward. She was one of those people who are irrevocably, incurably honest and therefore both inflexible and vulnerable at the same time.

The Islamic Revolution, as it turned out, did more damage to Islam by using it as an instrument of oppression than any alien ever could have done.

[V]alue your dreams but . . . be wary of them also, . . . look for integrity in unusual places.

The key to success is having no qualms about failure.

Pully, hauly, tug with a will; the gods wiggle waggle, but the sky stands still.

Ruins, for me, are the beginning. With the debris, you can construct new ideas. They are symbols of a beginning.

When I write songs, I try to write in a way to reach as many people as I can, to be a lighthouse versus a flashlight.

Laws that require equal protections reinforce the moral imperative of equality.

I think I can lead a pretty anonymous life, yeah.

In the morning, when the nothing vase casts a something shadow, like the memory of someone you've lost, what can you say about that?

Life isn't all haha hehe.

Therefore, it is necessary to be a fox to discover the snares and a lion to terrify the wolves

There are moments when art attains almost to the dignity of manual labor.