I usually need a can of beer to prime me.

Writing books is the closest men ever come to childbearing.

A modern democracy is a tyranny whose borders are undefined; one discovers how far one can go only by traveling in a straight line until one is stopped.

The function of socialism is to raise suffering to a higher level.

Khomeini has offered us the opportunity to regain our frail religion ... faith in the power of words.

There was that law of life, so cruel and so just, that one must grow or else pay more for remaining the same.

Any war that requires the suspension of reason as a necessity for support is a bad war.

America is a hurricane, and the only people who do not hear the sound are those fortunate if incredibly stupid and smug White Protestants who live in the center, in the serene eye of the big wind.

I was thinking that surgeons had to be the happiest people on earth. To cut people up and get paid for it-that's happiness, I told myself.

Love asks us that we be a little braver than is comfortable, a little more generous, a little more flexible. It means living on the edge more than we care to.

Reaching consensus in a group is often confused with finding the right answer.

It's the right idea, but not the right time.

Life is fragile, yet to obstinately struggle is natural.

The building of a just society means overcoming every obstacle to the creation of authentic peace.

Novels help us to resist the temptation to think of the past as deficient.

Humanity has understood nothing. Religious, tribal, national wars continue. The world continues to be in a sea of blood.

I put in my list all the busy, useful independent spinsters I know, for liberty is a better husband than love to many of us.

I try to think of something catchy to say, but there's nothing but irritation that something that was funny yo an eleven-year-old boy is still funny to a seventeen-year-old one.

Courage to be who you are is the cousin of loving the Divine, yourself and others.

Whatever healing work we each do contributes to the healing of us all.

Those who reject integration programs in the long term have as little right to stay in Germany as a hate preacher paid from abroad in a mosque.