I don't read other writers because I'm writing all the time. It's too disturbing to read a writer with a good style when you're in the middle of putting your work together.

Writing books is the closest men ever come to childbearing.

A modern democracy is a tyranny whose borders are undefined; one discovers how far one can go only by traveling in a straight line until one is stopped.

The function of socialism is to raise suffering to a higher level.

Khomeini has offered us the opportunity to regain our frail religion ... faith in the power of words.

There was that law of life, so cruel and so just, that one must grow or else pay more for remaining the same.

Any war that requires the suspension of reason as a necessity for support is a bad war.

America is a hurricane, and the only people who do not hear the sound are those fortunate if incredibly stupid and smug White Protestants who live in the center, in the serene eye of the big wind.

I was thinking that surgeons had to be the happiest people on earth. To cut people up and get paid for it-that's happiness, I told myself.

Love asks us that we be a little braver than is comfortable, a little more generous, a little more flexible. It means living on the edge more than we care to.

Reaching consensus in a group is often confused with finding the right answer.

We live on a little island of the articulable, which we tend to mistake for reality itself.

There is only one success-to be able to spend life in your own way.

Nothing complements a fast mind better than a slow tongue. And nothing aggravates a slow mind better than a fast tongue.

My songs are just little letters to me.

3D doesn't work quite so well with quick cuts and I probably would have done some longer takes had I really taken that information onboard.

Naturally, when one makes progressive steps, there may be some who see it as a betrayal of their goals and interests.

I spot detail quickly.

I practiced medicine up 'til now. I practice psychiatry. I shifted from different specialties. I started as a village doctor - community doctor, public health preventive medicine.

I'm really into the idea of playing sit-down drums again. I don't know if it'll end up that way, but as of right now, that's what I'm interested in doing.

The only consolation I can find in your immediate presence is your ultimate absence.