I know that the fantastic amount of profit that people want to make on anything is damaging. And that none of us seem able to resist it.

There's something to be said about a slightly plump person—you have just enough of too much.

The inevitable is no less a shock just because it is inevitable.

Express everything you like. No word can hurt you. None. No idea can hurt you. Not being able to express an idea or word will hurt you more. Like a bullet.

I was given a dictionary when I was seven, and I read it because I had nothing else to read. I read it the way you read a book.

People don't make changes because things are wonderful.

I would be lost without the feeling of antagonism that people have towards me. I write out of defiance.

People only say I’m angry because I’m black and I’m a woman.

A great piece of literature encompasses all that is and all that will be.

...yet a memory cannot be trusted, for so much of the experience of the past is determined by the experience of the present.

I'm so used to being misunderstood.

If you have to put someone on a pedestal, put teachers. They are society's heroes.

We believe that Lebanon has been the first real experience for all the Arabs.

The past exudes legend: one can't make pure clay of time's mud.

I'm not the kind of guy who just goes up to women.

The fates lead him who will; him who won't they drag.

Treat your life like something to be sculpted.

I was a terrible English student.

I feel like all the songs are little scenes, different angles, of the feelings that come around something ending.

College had little effect on me. I'd have been the same writer if I'd gone to MIT, except I'd have flunked out sooner.

No problem can withstand the assault of sustained thinking.