Europe was a very contentious subject in literature and yet jazz musicians still depended on Europe. Now it's not such a big deal.

I can see criticizing, complaining, protesting - anything but choosing not to vote. Too many people died for us not to vote.

Criticism shouldn't be a performance that upstages the work it's talking about.

Home is the place where there is somebody who does not wish you any pain.

You can get away with anything as long as it works.

I think at the beginning of one's writing life, negative reviews are what one does to get attention and stake out your territory. It's also often a mistake.

It's not nothing when you're abroad and you don't have a washing machine.

People from Europe and people from Africa encountered one another long before the invention of "Europe" and "Africa" and "white people" and "black people."

The rise of fascism in Europe sent most Americans home. Some black American communists who had emigrated to the Soviet Union perished in Stalin's purges of the late 1930s.

If you're bored, your readers will be bored. If you're faking it, you won't get the kind of readers you want.

I can see Obama trying to be the president who suggests solutions for everyone who has experienced economic hardship.

Father to teenage son: "My relationship with you is more important than anything I've got to say to you.

Memory is... similar to anticipation: an instrument of simplification and selection.

To tell you the Truth: It's better to give rather than to receive.

I'm not, like, Daniel Day Lewis. Yet. I will get there!

Sweet sixteen today. She's looking like her momma a little more every day.

There's only two ways to be completely alone in this world, lost in a crowd or in total isolation.

LORD strengthen me where I am too weak and weaken me where I am too strong!

It is an open question whether any behavior based on fear of eternal punishment can be regarded as ethical or should be regarded as merely cowardly.

We are neither worse nor better than those who eye us critically.

There's no reason to do anything twice, and certainly no reason to do something that almost killed you.