A man screaming is not a dancing bear. Life is not a spectacle.

Culture is everything. Culture is the way we dress, the way we carry our heads, the way we walk, the way we tie our ties - it is not only the fact of writing books or building houses.

It is no use painting the foot of the tree white, the strength of the bark cries out from beneath the paint.

I have a different idea of a universal. It is of a universal rich with all that is particular, rich with all the particulars there are, the deepening of each particular, the coexistence of them all.

There's room for everyone at the rendezvous of victory.

Africa, help me to go home, carry me like an aged child in your arms. Undress me and wash me. Strip me of all of these garments, strip me as a man strips off dreams when the dawn comes. . . .

In the whole world no poor devil is lynched, no wretch is tortured, in whom I too am not degraded and murdered.

The weakness of most men they do not know how to become a stone or tree.

Reason, I sacrifice you to the evening breeze.

And let me die suddenly, to be born again in the revelation of beauty....And the revelation of beauty is the wisdom of the ancestors.

Poetic knowledge is born in the great silence of scientific knowledge.

When you give the supply of discipline, life becomes easy for you.

When I write I can shake off all my cares. My sorrow disappears, my spirits are revived.

There is nothing to be gained by being unnecessarily nasty. Violence begets violence.

If you overpower your enemy, then pardon him by way of thankfulness to Allah, for being able to subdue him.

If you argue against reality you will suffer.

In short, you have only your emotions to sell. This is the experience of all writers.

It may not have the virtuous ring of the golden rule, but the maxim "never say never" is one of the most important in ethics.

For what the lover would, that would the beloved; what she would ask of him that should he go before to grant. Without accord such as this, love is but a bond and a constraint.

Don't accept the limitations of other people who claim things are 'unchangeable'. If it's written in stone, bring your hammer and chisel.

There's something to be said for being classically trained on piano, but not having your whole makeup be tied to one instrument.