Being a liberal progressive has been demonized as anti-white or overly on the side of blacks. There's nothing that can be done about that; it's just where we are in the history of our perceptions.

I can see criticizing, complaining, protesting - anything but choosing not to vote. Too many people died for us not to vote.

Criticism shouldn't be a performance that upstages the work it's talking about.

Home is the place where there is somebody who does not wish you any pain.

You can get away with anything as long as it works.

I think at the beginning of one's writing life, negative reviews are what one does to get attention and stake out your territory. It's also often a mistake.

It's not nothing when you're abroad and you don't have a washing machine.

People from Europe and people from Africa encountered one another long before the invention of "Europe" and "Africa" and "white people" and "black people."

The rise of fascism in Europe sent most Americans home. Some black American communists who had emigrated to the Soviet Union perished in Stalin's purges of the late 1930s.

If you're bored, your readers will be bored. If you're faking it, you won't get the kind of readers you want.

I can see Obama trying to be the president who suggests solutions for everyone who has experienced economic hardship.

If at first you don't succeed, remove all evidence you ever tried.

Be confident but with a leashed ego.

Real nobility is based on scorn, courage, and profound indifference.

Ninety-nine percent of all species that ever lived are now extinct.

Virtue is not the absence of vices or the avoidance of moral dangers; virtue is a vivid and separate thing, like pain or a particular smell.

Of course there are certain things that get to me, but I try and lead by example and show people that, especially with haters, that you should just ignore them.

It's important to have a life outside the band.

... the average Catholic perceives no connection between religion and morality, unless it is a question of someone else's morality.

The mind demands rules; the facts demand exceptions.

Our technology has already outstripped our ability to control it.