Every being cries out in silence to be read differently. Do not be indifferent to these cries.

Attention is the rarest and purest form of generosity.

We must not wish for the disappearance of our troubles but for the grace to transform them.

Pain and suffering are a kind of currency passed from hand to hand until they reach someone who receives them but does not pass them on.

There are only two things that pierce the human heart. One is beauty. The other is affliction.

If you want to know what a man is really like, take notice of how he acts when he loses money.

A hurtful act is the transference to others of the degradation which we bear in ourselves.

There is one, and only one, thing in modern society more hideous than crime namely, repressive justice.

The joy of learning is as indispensable in study as breathing is in running.

Equality is the public recognition, effectively expressed in institutions and manners, of the principle that an equal degree of attention is due to the needs of all human beings.

More than in any other performing arts the lack of respect for acting seems to spring from the fact that every layman considers himself a valid critic.

Dare you see a Soul at the White Heat?

Your clothes should always make a statement.

Even though some in our government may claim that civil liberties must be compromised in order to protect the public, we must be wary of what we are giving up in the name of fighting terrorism.

You have to come up in the world before it's worthwhile for those worth less to put you down.

Growing up, I thought I was white. It didn't occur to me I was Asian-American until I was studying abroad in Denmark and there was a little bit of prejudice.

You can't carve up the world. It's not a pie.

Nick subjected him to a long, judgmental stare. "There's something very wrong with you," he said at last. "I thought you should know.

The writer - more especially the novelist - who has not, at one moment or another, considered his publisher unworthy of him, has still to be conceived.

Theirs is the present who can praise the past.

To my father, business was the highest calling, but to my mother, medicine was the top profession.