I don't think any good book is based on factual experience. Bad books are about things the writer already knew before he wrote them.

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.

She could not keep his death in her head, like when she tried to imagine the infiniteness of the universe and nearly swooned at the vastness of the thought.

Boy, those French: they have a different word for everything!

We dance with women in groups, but it is very rare that you have a partner that is a woman. The dance world is very macho - woman, boy, always couples, and it's very standardized.

...if the spell was off, I’d have my heart eaten before I could turn around.” “Don’t you want your heart eaten?” asked the fire. [...] “Naturally I don’t,” Sophie answered.

The beauty of the human mind is that any decision that is made can be unmade.

Before catechisms can instill a proper humility, small children know the truth that their own existence has caused the world to bloom into being.

Hide me from day's garish eye.

A moment of insight from God is worth more than a lifetime of experience.

If you allow yourself to deepen with midlife, your experience of everything deepens, including your experience of God.

I think of myself as a young prince from a long line of royalty.