I wanted to pull away from the things that marked my parents as being different.

That's what books are for... to travel without moving an inch.

Fiction is the only way I know a human being can inhabit the mind of another human being.

Pack a pillow and blanket and see as much of the world as you can.You will not regret it.

I am drawn to any story that makes me want to read from one sentence to the next. I have no other criterion.

A bicultural upbringing is a rich but imperfect thing

Pet names are a persistant remnant of childhood, a reminder that life is not always so serious, so formal, so complicated. They are a reminder, too, that one is not all things to all people.

Somehow, bad news, however ridden with static, however filled with echoes, always manages to be conveyed.

The first sentence of a book is a handshake, perhaps an embrace.

That the last two letters in her name were the first two in his, a silly thing he never mentioned to her but caused him to believe that they were bound together.

It didn't matter that I wore clothes from Sears; I was still different. I looked different. My name was different. I wanted to pull away from the things that marked my parents as being different.

You have to salvage what you can, even if you're the one who buried it in the first place.

If we only look within, we will see he Light as if we were seeing our own image in a mirror. (122)

You know the only rule you need to know to get on in this country? ‘Never complain, never explain.

What feminism calls patriarchy is simply civilization , an abstract system designed by men but augmented and now co-owned by women.

For a man's house is his castle.

Doing nothing is sometimes one of the highest of the duties of man.

My name is real, which probably explains why I never became a superstar... how would that look in lights?

As believers we all have an opportunity and moral obligation to recognize our spiritual common ground; to rise above our differences; to combat prejudice and intolerance.

The instinct of a man is to pursue everything that flies from him, and to fly from all that pursue him.

I will never regret not denouncing apartheid.