Beginning 'Beloved' with numerals rather than spelled out numbers, it was my intention to give the house an identity separate from the street or even the city.

I have only to break into the tightness of a strawberry, and I see summer - its dust and lowering skies.

If you want to fly, you have to give up the things that weigh you down.

The function of freedom is to free someone else.

Don’t beg anybody for anything, especially love.

There is no such thing as race. None. There is just a human race - scientifically, anthropologically. Racism is a construct, a social construct... it has a social function, racism.

There is no time for despair, no place for self-pity, no need for silence, no room for fear. We speak, we write, we do language. That is how civilizations heal.

If there's a book you really want to read, but it hasn't been written yet, then you must write it.

In times of dread, artists must never choose to remain silent.

All water has a perfect memory and is forever trying to get back to where it was.

Oppressive language does more than represent violence; it is violence; does more than represent the limits of knowledge; it limits knowledge.

I believe in love but I don't sit around waiting for it.

The power confided in me will be used to hold, occupy and possess the property and places belonging to the government, and to collect the duties and imposts.

There is no essential difference between classical and popular music. Music is music. I want to communicate with the listener who finds Indian classical music remote.

You can put people's feet to the fire a bit just by reminding them that we're constantly creating our own history.

In the press this week, NBC has been calling me every name in the book. In fact, they think I'm such an idiot they now want me to run the network.

If you want to understand a subject promise to speak on it.

Artillery conquers and infantry occupies.

I have said explicitly from day one when I announced this policy in, I believe, November of 2011, that I and our government oppose the idea of banning the wearing of the niqab in public.

Whatever the dangers of the action we take, the dangers of inaction are far, far greater.

Good wine needs no bush.