[B]inary opposites fit nicely the formulation of history as written, but they do little to capture the messy, inchoate reality of history as lived.

For sheer drama, few accounts of slavery match Solomon Northup's tale of abduction from freedom and forcible enslavement.

A man always finds it hard to realize that he may have finally lost a woman's love, however badly he may have treated her.

Knowledge is a social construct, a consensus among the members of a community of knowledgeable peers.

The first and foremost reality is that suffering and death are not only enemies of life, but a means of reminding us of life's twin realities, love and hate.

The poet must be more useful than any other member if his tribe.

I fear explanations explanatory of things explained.

Between 2 and 5 I'm reading in to find out what's been going on while I've been asleep.

I gambled and I lost. I failed in securing my options for this choice for myself, but I succeeded in verifying the Dark Age is still with us.

Don't make the mistake of believing it's enough to reproduce the realities of life.... The object of art is to give life a shape, and to do it by every conceivable artifice.

I do hope I play out the contradictions that I feel, all the anxieties and dilemmas. If they're there in the work, then that's brilliant.

Faith is a way of going within and creating a sense of control over one's life at any given moment.