If there's a book you really want to read, but it hasn't been written yet, then you must write it.

I have only to break into the tightness of a strawberry, and I see summer - its dust and lowering skies.

If you want to fly, you have to give up the things that weigh you down.

The function of freedom is to free someone else.

Don’t beg anybody for anything, especially love.

There is no such thing as race. None. There is just a human race - scientifically, anthropologically. Racism is a construct, a social construct... it has a social function, racism.

There is no time for despair, no place for self-pity, no need for silence, no room for fear. We speak, we write, we do language. That is how civilizations heal.

In times of dread, artists must never choose to remain silent.

All water has a perfect memory and is forever trying to get back to where it was.

Oppressive language does more than represent violence; it is violence; does more than represent the limits of knowledge; it limits knowledge.

She is a friend of mind. She gather me, man. The pieces I am, she gather them and give them back to me in all the right order. It's good, you know, when you got a woman who is a friend of your mind.

Detroit is big enough to matter in the world and small enough for you to matter in it.

She is such a health food nut she thinks a grape is wine in pill form.

Blood sin and desecration of the race are the original sin in this world and the end of a humanity which surrenders to it.

I could make you read the entire quadrant exposition again...BACK TO BACK TO BACK TO BACK.

...Ned always said that the man who passes the sentence should swing the blade, though he never took any joy in the duty. But I would, oh, yes.

The argument that making contraceptives available to young people would prevent teen pregnancies is ridiculous. That's like offering a cookbook as a cure to people who are trying to lose weight.

[St. Elmo's Fire] it was pretty soon after that. I know we didn't do Breakfast Club knowing we were going to do that.

He who would be serene and pure needs but one thing, detachment.

If you use Hollywood as the test tissue for mankind, what could the prognosis be?

A man looks pretty small at a wedding, George. All those good women standing shoulder to shoulder, making sure that the knot's tied in a mighty public way.