I do lots of reading and speaking at many universities about literature and also about politics, which is as much a part of my life as the literature.

Let us go forth with fear and courage and rage to save the world.

People will sometimes say, "Why don't you write more politics?" And I have to explain to them that writing the lives of women IS politics.

Write what will stop your breath if you don’t write.

Today's wars are about oil. But alternate energies exist now - solar, wind - for every important energy-using activity in our lives. The only human work that cannot be done without oil is war.

Sometimes you find that what is most personal is also what connects you most strongly with others.

Sometimes, walking with a friend, I forget the world.

Women should stick together. Didn’t you learn anything yet?

All that is really necessary for survival of the fittest, it seems, is an interest in life, good, bad or peculiar.

Literature, fiction, poetry, whatever, makes justice in the world. That's why it almost always has to be on the side of the underdog.

I lived in a house in the East Bronx, a totally Jewish neighborhood on East 172nd Street. You didn't see Christians much, although one lived next door. We thought they were kind of a minority.

Southerners have mastered picking, choosing, and rationalizing religious texts to fit their social agenda better than their own mother’s fried chicken recipe.

Words are divine force.

No labourer in the world is expected to work for room board and love -except the housewife.

The young patriots now returning from war in Iraq and Afghanistan and other deployments worldwide are joining the ranks of veterans to whom America owes an immense debt of gratitude.

Worry does not empty tomorrow of its sorrow. It empties today of its strength.

There hasn't been a true breakdown or effort to break Thai music into genres. They're not into dicing and slicing everything up.

I'm not disappointed with bronze. It's always good to come away with a medal.

Let a man be stimulated by poetry, established by the rules of propriety, and perfected by music.

If we are able to meet these two requirements - regularity in meditation and leading a good life in society, day-to-day a good life - then nothing would be unattainable by us.

Here I am at the end of the road and at the top of the heap.