Trouble is the thing that strong men grow by. Met in the right way it is a sure-fire means of putting iron into the victim's will and making him a tougher man to down forever after.

The happy and efficient people in this world are those who accept trouble as a normal detail of human life and resolve to capitalize it when it comes along.

Literature is one kind of aesthetic politics.

The pain of the mind is worse than the pain of the body.

Keep cool anger is not an argument.

The retreat of a minor piece to the back rank, where it cuts the lines of communication between the rooks, is permissable only in exceptional cases.

When are we going to stop making excuses for the terrorists and saying that somebody is making them do it? No, these are simply evil people who want to kill.

My parents are wonderful people and they instilled in me an idealism for which I'm grateful.

A bass player has to think and play like a bass player. A drummer has to play and think like a drummer, and stay out of the way of the vocalist. The guitar player has to respect everybody else.

The principal linkages between Japan and the U.S. global economies are trade, financial markets, and commodity markets.

It got to the point where I started hiding because I didn't want to be photographed. (On living with Robert Mapplethorpe)

I think that most manufacturing and mining should be under the purview of state authorities.