I have a lot of respect for readers because I'm a reader. That's how I got into writing.

I have only to break into the tightness of a strawberry, and I see summer - its dust and lowering skies.

If you want to fly, you have to give up the things that weigh you down.

The function of freedom is to free someone else.

Don’t beg anybody for anything, especially love.

There is no such thing as race. None. There is just a human race - scientifically, anthropologically. Racism is a construct, a social construct... it has a social function, racism.

There is no time for despair, no place for self-pity, no need for silence, no room for fear. We speak, we write, we do language. That is how civilizations heal.

If there's a book you really want to read, but it hasn't been written yet, then you must write it.

In times of dread, artists must never choose to remain silent.

All water has a perfect memory and is forever trying to get back to where it was.

Oppressive language does more than represent violence; it is violence; does more than represent the limits of knowledge; it limits knowledge.

As you become a better writer, the writing becomes more difficult. You toil harder to tell a story in a lesser number of words.

Jesus Christ of Nazareth remains our solid Rock.

I believe God intervenes in the lives of every one of us. He speaks to us in different ways and at different times so that we may know he is the author of our very personality.

The loneliest days are the ones where you keep company with someone you love who can’t hear you.

Why is it so easy to abandon ourselves, and why do we so easily fall into the illusion that this self-abandonment is the only way people will like us?

The more a thing tends to be permanent, the more it tends to be lifeless.

Middle-class families know education begins at birth.

In earlier religions the spirit of the time was expressed through the individual and confirmed by miracles. In modern religions the spirit is expressed through the many and confirmed by reason.

For me, being a woman suits what I want to talk about and what my audience wants to hear. Maybe I'm a dying breed.

To play down mothering as small is to crack the very foundation on which greatness stands.