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

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.

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

But when he has done this, let him not say that he knows better than his master, for he only holds a candle in sunshine.

Never ask questions you don't want the answer to.

Do what is right for the right reasons.

In three words I can sum up everything I've learned about life. It goes on.

Your fellow man is your mirror. If your own face is clean, the image you perceive will also be flawless.

We learn from history that we do not learn from history

I want the people I love to get up and speak about me, and even if you cry it'll be OK. I want you to say honest things.

She thought of the library, so shining white and new; the rows and rows of unread books; the bliss of unhurried sojourns there and of going out to a restaurant, alone, to eat.

All drugs of any interest to any moderately intelligent person in America are now illegal.