One wants to tell a story, like Scheherezade, in order not to die. It's one of the oldest urges in mankind. It's a way of stalling death.

Don't classify me, read me. I'm a writer, not a genre.

Recognize yourself in he and she who are not like you and me.

Writing is a struggle against silence.

The United States has written the white history of the United States. It now needs to write the black, Latino, Indian, Asian and Caribbean history of the United States.

Art gives life to what history killed. Art gives voice to what history denied, silenced, or persecuted. Art brings truth to the lies of history.

I need, therefore I imagine.

What's happened at the Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq is one of the grossest violations of human rights under the Geneva Conventions that we have record of. It is simply monstrous.

Literature overtakes history, for literature gives you more than one life. It expands experience and opens new opportunities to readers.

You start by writing to live. You end by writing so as not to die.

Culture consists of connections, not of separations: to specialize is to isolate.

You become what you think about all day long.

One who has passed the thirtieth yearalready is as good as dead--it would be best to kill you off by then.

Paranoids are the only ones who notice things anymore.

As actors, we were fighting that tooth and nail because of fear, because language is a crutch and dialogue is a crutch, and it's so easy to just have a great writer write you a line.

I don't know how everybody else feels, but I just long for reality rather than these made-up things.

The world is richer than it is possible to express in any single language.

Abstract is not a style. I simply want to make a surface work. This is just a use of space and form: it's an ambivalence of forms and space.

Teaching might even be the greatest of the arts since the medium is the human mind and spirit.

Certainly the existence of these huge nuclear force was important for the ultimate confrontation, let's say, over western Europe. You just can't use them to deal with a situation like Afghanistan.

The women all want to dance. I dance all night every night.