For sometimes you can't help but crave some ruin in what you love.

It is 'where we are' that should make all the difference, whether we believe we belong there or not.

The truth, finally, is who can tell it.

As for what's the most challenging aspect of teaching, it's convincing younger writers of the importance of reading widely and passionately.

So my first book I had no experience having written a book, but each book is a little snapshot of who you are at that moment, accrued all through time, so I accept that.

In this difficult era the most valuable commodity is the unfailing turn of the hours and how they retrieve for us the known harbor of yesterday.

They're not parallel at all. They're my concerns, but how they're expressed particularly on the page is completely divorced from who I am in my street life.

Don’t sanctuaries become prisons, and vice versa, foremost in the mind?

Imagination might not be limitless. It's still tethered to the universe of what we know.

For at some point, each of us will be asked to embody what we feel and know.

Most people dont think about race as much as I do. They dont have to.

Envy and greed always—always—exact a terrible price. I have never met an envious or greedy person who was at peace.

I think the universe might be sending us a sign.

I was always a sensitive, sweet kid, but I got brutalized and I became brutal. And frankly, I don't think it was my natural makeup. I don't think its anyone's natural makeup to be a violent brawler.

At any given time, there are ideas and images that can only be communicated indirectly.

He who is in evil, is also in the punishment of evil.

You master Monday! You start winning the day! You start winning the week! Then the month! Then the year!

The message I understood was this: Just don't get caught!

Only tyrannies understand the power of art.

I say, Ich liebe Deutschland! Heil Hitler! and farewell.

As a decrepit father takes delight To see his active child do deeds of youth, So I, made lame by fortune's dearest spite, Take all my comfort of thy worth and truth.