When your afraid,reallyafraid, you see things you never saw before, you pay attention to the world.

But the thing about remembering is that you don't forget.

With a hangover and with fear, it is difficult to put a helmet on your head.

They carried the sky. The whole atmosphere, they carried it, the humidity, the monsoons, the stink of fungus and decay, all of it, they carried gravity.

Men killed, and died, because they were embarrassed not to.

Fiction is the lie that helps us understand the truth.

I want you to feel what I felt. I want you to know why story-truth is truer sometimes than happening-truth.

[Y]ou can tell a true war story by its absolute and uncompromising allegiance to obscenity and evil.

Laughter does not deny pain. Laughter - like a wail - acknowledges and replies to pain.

Why do our politicians put warnings on cigarette packs and not on their own foreheads?

It's a hard thing to explain to somebody who hasn't felt it, but the presence of death and danger has a way of bringing you fully awake. It makes things vivid.

People who LIKE movies have a favorite. People who LOVE movies couldn't possibly choose.

We need somebody to put rat poisoning in Justice Stevens' creme brulee. That's just a joke, for you in the media.

The great poems are not about experience, but are the experience itself, felt in the body.

When I got somethin' to say, I'll say it.

America can only live up to its potential when each and every American has the chance to live up to your potential, too.

Why do you speak to me of the stones? It is only the arch that matters to me.

I have always believed in dialogue and in nonviolence, and if you look at my background you will see that it has always been my policy to talk to everyone.

I've got so many clothes; I can dress in any style.

Harvard was an extraordinary window on the world.

Somewhere I heard a victorious "Yes" in answer to my question of the existence of ultimate purpose.