As for what's the most challenging aspect of teaching, it's convincing younger writers of the importance of reading widely and passionately.

For sometimes you can't help but crave some ruin in what you love.

It is 'where we are' that should make all the difference, whether we believe we belong there or not.

The truth, finally, is who can tell it.

So my first book I had no experience having written a book, but each book is a little snapshot of who you are at that moment, accrued all through time, so I accept that.

In this difficult era the most valuable commodity is the unfailing turn of the hours and how they retrieve for us the known harbor of yesterday.

They're not parallel at all. They're my concerns, but how they're expressed particularly on the page is completely divorced from who I am in my street life.

Don’t sanctuaries become prisons, and vice versa, foremost in the mind?

Imagination might not be limitless. It's still tethered to the universe of what we know.

For at some point, each of us will be asked to embody what we feel and know.

Most people dont think about race as much as I do. They dont have to.

I speak gibberish to the civilized world and it replies in kind.

There is only one way to success, wealth and achievement and that is through a lot of hard work.

... it is to your credit that you recognize that if he was a monster then it was other monstrous things which made him so. The iron forged on the anvil cannot be blamed for the hammer...

People who read always have something interesting to say.

The first step to that kingdom of God within is to find peace within even among chaos.

I consider myself to have a decent sense of humor. What's life without a sense of humor?

When looking at any significant work of art, remember that a more significant one probably has had to be sacrificed.

What I hated even more than the conflict was the lurid spectacle of a world of unreason.

Clearly, the first task is to gain acceptance of a more reasonable view of the future, one that opens possibilities rather than forecloses them.

Most men think they are good drivers. Most women think they are good in bed. They aren't.