Every moment you steal from the present is a moment you've lost forever. There is only now.

I like to look at how people work together when they are put into stressful situations, when life stops being cozy.

Art can make a difference because it pulls people up short. It says, don't accept things for their face value; you don't have to go along with any of this; you can think for yourself.

I don't know how to answer. I know what I think, but words in the head are like voices underwater. They are distorted.

I felt like a seed in a pomegranate. Some say that the pomegranate was the real apple of Eve, fruit of the womb, I would eat my way into perdition to taste you.

Happiness is a specific. Misery is a generalization. People usually know exactly why they are happy. They very rarely know why they are miserable.

Quest is at the heart of what I do-the holy grail, and the terror that you'll never find it, seemed a perfect metaphor for life.

I find pieces of myself everywhere, and I cut myself handling them.

Do you fall in love often?" Yes often. With a view, with a book, with a dog, a cat, with numbers, with friends, with complete strangers, with nothing at all.

I would eat my way into perdition to taste you.

Life cannot be calculated. That's the big mistake our civilization made. We never accepted that randomness is not a mistake in the equation -- it is part of the equation.

He opened his eyes to half-cast. With a low rumble he lifted her onto his hips. "Take me to heaven, lassie. For no one but ye can cool the fire thrumming in my blood.

There is a big difference between being lonely and being alone. I am alone when I write, but I am rarely lonely.

Everybody's entitled to their own opinion.

The Guardian,[is] one of the most consistently anti-Catholic newspapers in the world.

Poetry is essentially the discovery, the love, the passion for the name of everything.

Simple fairness dictates that government must not raise taxes on families struggling to pay their bills.

A perfect record does not mean that someone is the greatest. Rocky Marciano never lost a fight, but I never hear anyone say he's the greatest heavyweight champion of all time.

Sometimes it seems as if I have spent the first half of my life refusing to let white people define me and the second half refusing to let black people define me.