Only another writer can know how much damage writing a novel can do to you. It's an unnatural activity to sit at a desk and squeeze words out of yourself.

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.

One man’s “magic” is another man’s engineering. “Supernatural” is a null word.

I believe Innovation is more likely to emerge from a culture of encouragement.

He wanted to crumple her up and toss her from his mind like a scrap piece of paper filled with nonsensical doodles or dissonant words that formed unbalanced rhymes. Yet, he refused throw her away.

Except for a few guitar chords, everything I've learned in my life that is of any value I've learned from women.

As a young man I prayed for success. Now I just pray to be worthy of it.

I'm interested in art, and I think about the process of making art. It's part of my personality, my experience of the world, so it ends up in the movies. It's where my head is.

In the real world there is no nature vs. nurture argument, only an infinitely complex and moment-by-moment interaction between genetic and environmental effects

In all the years I've been a therapist, I've yet to meet one girl who likes her body.

It's like, it's up to the people to fall in love with the song. The record company can only do so much.

Sometimes I spit on my mother's portrait for pleasure.