You are a door to an existence she does not desire, but even if the room beyond is repugnant, that door has won a portion of her affection.

Readers don’t work for writers. They work for themselves.

It is possible to adore those newly come into your world, to envision, no matter how late in the day, a happily entwined future with those who have not been part of your past.

When you see the fire of hate, spread the tranquility of your ocean of love.

Routine is not organization, any more than paralysis is order.

If you're not prepared, it's not pressure you feel, it's fear.

I think that when you let go and "throw it all away" and stop getting attached and say "whatever happens, happens", you don't invest too much in anything particular, and things work out.

A lot of the ways of advertising a book - the cover, whether somebody sees it on a subway or sees it in a bookstore - those things are going to rapidly diminish as we move to an electronic model.

Art is visceral and vulgar - it's an eruption.

There is no heresy or no philosophy which is so abhorrent to the church as a human being.

When our students fail, we, as teachers, too, have failed.

Human Rights for everyone is the necessary foundation upon which all of us may build a world where everybody may live in peace and serenity and plenty.

None of us is perfect, but the point of our writing is to try to become better, to learn something that we may not have already realized, about ourselves, about the world we inhabit.