For human words are like shadows, and shadows are incapable of explaining light and between shadow and light there is the opaque body from which words are born.

The world is governed by institutions that are not democratic - the World Bank, the IMF, the WTO.

I think we are blind, Blind but seeing, Blind people who can see, but do not see.

People live with the illusion that we have a democratic system, but it's only the outward form of one. In reality we live in a plutocracy, a government of the rich.

The novel is not so much a literary genre, but a literary space, like a sea that is filled by many rivers.

The U.S. needs to control the Middle East, the gateway to Asia. It already has military installations in Uzbekistan.

Words that come from the heart are never spoken, they get caught in the throat and can only be read in ones's eyes.

A journey never ends. Only the travellers end.

What kind of world is this that can send machines to Mars and does nothing to stop the killing of a human being?

We use words to understand each other and even, sometimes, to find each other.

No human being can achieve all he or she desires in this life except in dreams, so good night all.

Ballet shoes... I cannot play with them like they're toys. But when the music is playing they get deep on my toes.

The Hebrews have no name for Him, the Moslems have a hundred. Both suggest the same thing, that there are concepts as well as emotions that can be communicated only allegorically.

With God in the Joy of Beauty and Youth

Charity should be spontaneous. Calculated altruism is an affront.

Except that a human being is both the public and the private. We are both, private and public in the same person.

There is no such thing as a secure writer: every novel is an impossible mountain.

I start to paint my walls. And I'm heavily influenced by films.

My parents were travelers. Every time my parents got ten dollars ahead they went somewhere. That's what they did. So I got the bug from them.

Hillary Clinton's economic plan is the biggest sitting duck to be blown to smithereens, you could do it in two sentences.

I wasn't nervous at all. I applied the same amount of efforts to the love scenes as I did to the skating and the acting and everything else.