A man's ethnic identity has more to do with a personal awareness than with geography.

In the time of your life, live—so that in that wondrous time you shall not add to the misery and sorrow of the world, but shall smile to the infinite delight and mystery of it."

Try as much as possible to be wholly alive, with all your might, and when you laugh, laugh like hell and when you get angry, get good and angry. Try to be alive. You will be dead soon enough.

It is simply in the nature of Armenian to study, to learn, to question, to speculate, to discover, to invent, to revise, to restore, to preserve, to make, and to give.

Be grateful for yourself...be thankful.

In the end, today is forever, yesterday is still today, and tomorrow is already today.

Good people are good because they've come to wisdom through failure.

I do not know what makes a writer, but it probably isn't happiness.

The role of art is to make a world which can be inhabited.

The greatest happiness you can have is knowing that you do not necessarily require happiness.

The writer who is a real writer is a rebel who never stops.

You can succeed beyond the past, but not beyond your belief

Images are ... a kind of emotional shorthand.

Put down me for a lifetime of success: give me credit, I'll find ways of paying.

Despite our best efforts and our highest hopes, America's long struggle with race is far from finished.

Keep in mind the challenging fact that your aim is not to get ahead of others, but to surpass yourself; to begin today to be the person you want to be.

No man will take counsel, but every man will take money. Therefore, money is better than counsel.

murder is not polite.

You are free to do whatever you like. You need only face the consequences.

We die, and we do not die.

If all we seek is an escape, what does that say about the world we live in? That village, that city, that life? We are desperate with our dreams. What - oh, what - does that say?