I choose this story above all others because it's a story I'm struggling to end.

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.

Death is said in the Bible to be a coronation for the Christian.

Thank you. For being willing to talk. For not turning me in. For... being you.''I'm pretty good at being me, ' I said. 'I've had all these years to practice--I hardly ever get it wrong these days.

I worked with a group of people who argued day and night - professors, officials, the Minister of Finance - but there were decisions that I had to make.

There's a tendency, especially among revolutionaries, to only show the good side of yourself and then when you come to power, the bad side comes out.

When the United States fought in Vietnam, it was organized modern technology versus organized human beings, and the human beings won.

I don't think there's a hobby that I haven't tried on.

Im a good guy. I love playing bad guys, but good guys that have a good thing going on, I like that, too. I dont like passive good guys.

Where to start is the problem, because nothing begins when it begins and nothing's over when it's over, and everything needs a preface: a preface, a postscript, a chart of simultaneous events.

My main wish is to get my books into other people's rooms, and to keep other people's books out of mine.

The most amusing thing about a pantomime horse is the necessity of having to shoot it twice.