Please note, I am not suggesting that illicit drugs are required to break down social barriers.

The difference between being Achilles and almost being Achilles is the difference between living and dying.

Real people are made out of a whole lot of things—flesh, bone, blood, nerves, stuff like that. Literary people are made out of words.

The real reason for quest is always self-knowledge.

Every language has a grammar, a set of rules that govern usage and meaning, and literary language is no different. It’s all more or less arbitrary of course, just like language itself.

Reading is an activity of the imagination, and the imagination in question is not the writer's alone.

If a story is no good, being based on Hamlet won't save it.

Rain falls on the just and the unjust alike.

In order to remain undead, I must steal the life force of someone whose fate matters less to me than my own.' I've always supposed that Wall Street traders utter essentially the same sentence.

Now, Joyce being Joyce, he has about five different purposes, one not being enough for genius.

You can use songs, scriptures and godly pictures to chart your thought-course in the right direction.

Words of comfort, skillfully administered, are the oldest therapy known to man.

I'm the least sexy person in real life.

When you're a kid, Kermit is Tom Hanks. He's Tom Hanks for kids or Jimmy Stewart for kids. He's truly the every man.

The face of tyranny Is always mild at first.

No moral value is greater than humanity.

My people, you gotta think before you move, you gotta speak before you cry, you gotta live before you die.

My body is very different from most of the dancers I dance with. My hair is different than most I dance with. But I didn't let that stop me. Black girls rock and can be ballerinas.

There are some people that we didn't forget, but we don't smile any more when they're mentioned.

Poverty and contempt generally go hand-in-hand in this world.