That there should be a purpose to suffering, that a person should be chosen for it, special - these are houses of the mind, in which whole peoples have found shelter.

Anything is possible. A man is what he makes up his mind to be.

Whatever I do in life, I'm almost always aware that there's another way to do it.

I like to listen. I'm much more interested in listening than in speaking, for sure.

When I think about why I would be a writer, why I should continue to be a writer, it seems to me one of the few things you can dowhere you're never bored.

... there is ... a big aspect of play in writing novels, and making the story more and more elaborate is just more and more fun.

I think that there is a bias in the current literary climate, which is not only very Western but very male.

A white person was by definition somebody. Other people needed, across their hearts, one steel rib.

A man was the sum of his limits; freedom only made him see how much so.

It's human to hear stories and to know how people live and to imagine how that is for them. It's very interdependent!

I hate to generalize because there are always so many exceptions to any rule.

We, my dear Mildred, are the observers of life. Let other people get married by all means, the more the merrier. . . . Let Dora marry if she likes. She hasn't your talent for observation.

If it weren't for the last minute nothing would get done.

Bring me Longstreet's head on a platter and the war will be over

I've had a wordless phase, and that's still not entirely over: what I sing is not always literally meant that way, and you can hear that in the way it is sung.

Hillary Clinton's done nothing, all she's done is tell everybody that the vets are in good shape. They're fine. And they're not fine. People are waiting in line for seven days to see a doctor.

In terms of the Richter scale this defeat was a force 8 gale.

When delicate and feeling souls are separated, there is not a feature in the sky, not a movement of the elements, not an aspiration of the breeze, but hints some cause for a lover's apprehension.

The only good Rook is a working Rook!

I feel rather like a rabbit that has taken a fox for its pupil.

There are two impulses in theatre: to be frivolous or to make rules.