I always looked upon the acts of racist exclusion, or insult, as pitiable, for the other person. I never absorbed that. I always thought that there was something deficient about such people.

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.

That's how it is with a thing like grief as well. It lies oil slick over everything you do. It will pour out through the gaps in the most ordinary afternoons.

I hate England and its hopelessness. I hate [Arnold] Bennett's resignation. Tragedy ought really to be a great big kick at misery.

All men now allow that if any human power could have stemmed the avalanche of the French Revolution, it would have been the reforms of Turgot.

Jack the Ripper's mother, who said to Jack, How come I never see you with the same girl twice? Never got a dinner!

I really just do what I like. I don't understand what the general public likes sometimes.

I'm a full disclosure kind of person.

What makes these creatures so awful is the feeling that they can use us in ways too horrible to imagine-and yet, we DO imagine them, which makes it worse than seeing it.

We explore because we are human and we want to know. I hope that Pluto will help us on that journey.

Anyone can sleep with a guy in 24-48 hours, but you're sending the wrong signal to the guy if you do that.

I write plays because dialogue is the most respectable way of contradicting myself.