You can get away with anything as long as it works.

I can see criticizing, complaining, protesting - anything but choosing not to vote. Too many people died for us not to vote.

Criticism shouldn't be a performance that upstages the work it's talking about.

Home is the place where there is somebody who does not wish you any pain.

I think at the beginning of one's writing life, negative reviews are what one does to get attention and stake out your territory. It's also often a mistake.

It's not nothing when you're abroad and you don't have a washing machine.

People from Europe and people from Africa encountered one another long before the invention of "Europe" and "Africa" and "white people" and "black people."

The rise of fascism in Europe sent most Americans home. Some black American communists who had emigrated to the Soviet Union perished in Stalin's purges of the late 1930s.

If you're bored, your readers will be bored. If you're faking it, you won't get the kind of readers you want.

I can see Obama trying to be the president who suggests solutions for everyone who has experienced economic hardship.

Europe was a very contentious subject in literature and yet jazz musicians still depended on Europe. Now it's not such a big deal.

A person becomes a real individual when he has set and accurately defined his goal

The only time we waste is the time we spend thinking we are alone.

The Buddha’s dharma didn’t teach peace and relaxation

Finding good players is easy. Getting them to play as a team is another story.

Finding some quiet time in your life, I think, is hugely important.

Earlier lives drift by on silver soles, and the shadows of the damned descend into these sighing waters.

War is never cheap or easy.

What doesn't hurt - is not life; what doesn't pass - is not happiness.

Nothing really mattered, and nothing could be lost.

I draw what I feel, which is no more than doing my job.