And when he died, I suddenly realized I wasn't crying for him at all, but for the things he did. I cried because he would never do them again.

You don't have to burn books to destroy a culture. Just get people to stop reading them.

Living at risk is jumping off the cliff and building your wings on the way down.

Jump, and you will find out how to unfold your wings as you fall.

Looking back over a lifetime, you see that love was the answer to everything.

Don't think. Thinking is the enemy of creativity. It's self-conscious, and anything self-conscious is lousy. You can't try to do things. You simply must do things.

Sometimes you just have to jump out the window and grow wings on the way down.

I know you've heard it a thousand times before. But it's true - hard work pays off. If you want to be good, you have to practice, practice, practice. If you don't love something, then don't do it.

Insanity is relative. It depends on who has who locked in what cage.

You must stay drunk on writing so reality cannot destroy you.

Write a short story every week. It's not possible to write 52 bad short stories in a row.

His ear heard more than what was said to him, and his slow speech had overtones not of thought, but of understanding beyond thought.

Blaming others for your mistakes, makes you powerless to change your life. Taking responsibility for your mistakes, gives you the power to change your life

The new information technology, indifferent to human suffering, does not accommodate humane needs unless we harness it and make it do so.

Interethnic and spiritual accord is our strategic resource, the basis for progress of our society and state.

To reform society, and with it humanity, there is only one mean; to transform the mentality of men, to direct them ("les orienter", Fr.) in a new spirit.

A legitimate democracy cannot act against a terror organization because it is using civilians as a human shield, and therefore it should absorb attacks on its own civilians.

I have never considered myself an economist.

I like my whisky old and my women young.

There is no moderate or immoderate Islam. Islam is Islam and that's it.

Lively, too. Talky as a jaybird. With something smart to say on every subject: better than the radio.