A person's destiny often ends before his death.

I was not a hypocrite, with one real face and several false ones. I had several faces because I was young and didn't know who I was or wanted to be.

People who shout joy from the rooftops are often the saddest of all.

Youth is a terrible thing: it is a stage trod by children in buskins and fancy costumes mouthing speeches they've memorized and fanatically believe but only half understand

Language is a skin: I rub my language against the other. It is as if I had words instead of fingers, or fingers at the tip of my words. My language trembles with desire.

Meekly swallowing and assimilating the customs of the more powerful has always been a strategy by which the less powerful have tried to fit in.

Genius or jock, it didn't seem to matter. Boys were born with a gene that kept girls, no matter how smart they might be, from understanding them.

Education is a method whereby one acquires a higher grade of prejudices.

Jews were the first to believe that history itself has meaning and that progress, not repetition, is the law of life.

I love really, really deep, dark-as-Russia storylines. I love supernatural aspects. I grew up with ghost stories.

I don't really care about clothes, but it's about wearing something that gives you social confidence.

I've shown people Richard Pryor who've never seen him, and most of them don't like him.

And as a bird each fond endearment tries To tempt its new-fledg'd offspring to the skies, He tried each art, reprov'd each dull delay, Allur'd to brighter worlds, and led the way.

If you're a voracious reader and you write something that you want to read, odds are other people will want to read it, too.