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

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

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.

Europe was a very contentious subject in literature and yet jazz musicians still depended on Europe. Now it's not such a big deal.

Quite half of the human race was in tears.

I never was ruined but twice - once when I lost a lawsuit and once when I gained one.

Comedy can simultaneously allow you to dive headfirst into the world's pain and escape it.

A lover is never a completely self-reliant person viewing the world through his own eyes, but a hostage to a certain delusion.

I don't know how Hollywood sees me.

A kiss is a lovely trick to stop speech.

When you are living your dreams it doesn’t feel like work, but it’s important to take some time away for yourself. It’s goot to make some time for your own company.

Family, that slippery word, a star to every wandering bark, and everyone sailing under a different sky.

Life is a green madness just now, trying to squeeze the last bit of warmth from the season.

I have rewritten — often several times — every word I have ever published. My pencils outlast their erasers.