What isn't said is as important as what is said.

A monster is a person who has stopped pretending.

It is failure that guides evolution; perfection provides no incentive for improvement, and nothing is perfect.

You are a New Yorker when what was there before is more real and solid than what is here now.

Memory is the most malicious cutter of all, preserving, recasting, panning in slow motion across the awful bits so that we retain every detail.

In other words, fiction is payback for those who have wronged you.

We never see other people anyway, only the monsters we make of them.

Sanctimony and self-regard are as American as smallpox blankets and supersize meals.

A society manufactures the heroes it requires.

Google "brooklyn writer" and you'll get, Did you mean: the future of literature as we know it?

Pain could be killed. Sadness could not, but the drugs did shut its mouth for a time.

Violence always leads to pain" Trendal Malian- Ishtaria: Prince of Blades

Poetry’s circular fulfillment was so persistent, when I was weak it gave me strength.

Birds shouldn't be able to find tearsThey are the definition of freedom

Something draws you... An impatience with your own ignorance.

A documentary photograph is not a factual photograph.

It's not the innocent young things that need gentle handling--it's the ones that have been frightened and hurt.

I'm ashamed of what I did, but I'm not ashamed of what I've done to correct my mistakes..... I'm proud of who I am.

I was born in Iran, left at a very young age - less than a year old - and grew up and was educated in the West.

Vessels expose the invisible Zeitgeist, the visible formed by the invisible.

Creativity is not simply a property of exceptional people but an exceptional property of all people.