With the pride of the artist, you must blow against the walls of every power that exists the small trumpet of your defiance.

Writing books is the closest men ever come to childbearing.

A modern democracy is a tyranny whose borders are undefined; one discovers how far one can go only by traveling in a straight line until one is stopped.

The function of socialism is to raise suffering to a higher level.

Khomeini has offered us the opportunity to regain our frail religion ... faith in the power of words.

There was that law of life, so cruel and so just, that one must grow or else pay more for remaining the same.

Any war that requires the suspension of reason as a necessity for support is a bad war.

America is a hurricane, and the only people who do not hear the sound are those fortunate if incredibly stupid and smug White Protestants who live in the center, in the serene eye of the big wind.

I was thinking that surgeons had to be the happiest people on earth. To cut people up and get paid for it-that's happiness, I told myself.

Love asks us that we be a little braver than is comfortable, a little more generous, a little more flexible. It means living on the edge more than we care to.

Reaching consensus in a group is often confused with finding the right answer.

I will follow you, my love, to the edge of all our days, to our very last tomorrows.

You can’t afford to leave your happiness to others. Create what you wish to experience.

Better to die on one's feet than to live on one's knees.

Time is just something we invented to make motion seem simple.

There's a lot of comedy in Intermission but it's got this depth. It's not comedy for comedy's sake - it's informed by something else. I like stuff like that

The still must tease with the promise of a story the viewer of it itches to be told.

A mind that is characterized by unrest will not be tranquil even in the presence of great calm.

We don't want apartheid liberalized. We want it dismantled. You can't improve something that is intrinsically evil.

There is nothing in the world stronger than gentleness.

Your true cosmopolitan is born, not made. He is very rare.