I am a literary animal. For me, everything ends in literature.

Don't classify me, read me. I'm a writer, not a genre.

Recognize yourself in he and she who are not like you and me.

Writing is a struggle against silence.

The United States has written the white history of the United States. It now needs to write the black, Latino, Indian, Asian and Caribbean history of the United States.

Art gives life to what history killed. Art gives voice to what history denied, silenced, or persecuted. Art brings truth to the lies of history.

I need, therefore I imagine.

One wants to tell a story, like Scheherezade, in order not to die. It's one of the oldest urges in mankind. It's a way of stalling death.

What's happened at the Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq is one of the grossest violations of human rights under the Geneva Conventions that we have record of. It is simply monstrous.

Literature overtakes history, for literature gives you more than one life. It expands experience and opens new opportunities to readers.

You start by writing to live. You end by writing so as not to die.

Each of us is in reality an abiding psychical entity far more extensive than he knows.

Man's greatness does not consist in being different from the animals that share the earth with him, but in being...conscious of things of which his environment has no inkling.

Quality and service are important, if you want to make a sale. If you want to keep a customer for life, keep your promises.

Most of the writers I like just intimidate and humble me but in that there's a good deal of inspiration to be had as well.

Suspect all of your favorite sentences.

I don't care if your world is ending today because I wasn't invited to it anyway.

Artificial glamor-false eyelashes, that sort of thing-usually is put on to hide a vacuum. The most beautiful face can only look vacuous if it masks an empty head.

Our job as conscious humans is to bring the beauty and goodness of everything to full consciousness, to full delight, to full awareness.

Overall my race hasn't been a problem. I'm a black artist with white skin. At the end of the day you have to sing what's in your own soul.

Hate pollutes the mind.