When a writer doesn’t show his face, he becomes a local symptom of God’s famous reluctance to appear.

I used to think it was possible for an artist to alter the inner life of the culture. Now bomb-makers and gunmen have taken that territory.

The letters released something, maybe a sense that he was not alone, that the world was a place where travelers in language could know the same things.

Jiu Jitsu provides a place of fellowship that, unfortunately, our society has largely failed to create.

Market society is a game where you win by making sure other people are better off with you than without you.

I'm Franco-Swiss. I've always been shuttling between these two worlds, never firmly planted in either one.

Do you know why I left America, Lidewij? So that I would never again have to encounter Americans." "But you are an American." "Incurably so, it seems.

No good is ever done to society by the pictorial representation of its diseases.

One compliment can keep me going for a whole month.

... the real heroes of race and culture would always be the people who stepped out of their own line to make a larger circle.

But lost chances are as much a part of life as chances taken, and a story cannot dwell on what might have been.

Feeling confident - or pretending that you feel confident - is necessary to reach for opportunities. It's a cliché, but opportunities are rarely offered; they're seized.

I've never liked the idea you have to be a certain age to be a pop star. I like the idea that anybody can enter, anybody can compete.