It was becoming a habit-this concentration on things behind him. Almost as though there were no future to be had. *Milkman*

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.

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

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.

The war had made some into libertines and some into serious, sober men.

It couldn’t last. Everyone was just killing time. But if all they did was kill time, time would end up killing them.

You can't look too old for the chorus.

I paint not the things I see but the feelings they arouse in me.

At the age of 80, I'm becoming a visual artist. This could be my rebirth.

Time sets all things right. Error lives but a day. Truth is eternal.

A lot of my success is because of what I look like. I know that.

In my opinion, poets talk through the symptoms of disease. These symptoms of disease are predictions, screams, and songs.

As an actor - like an artist - you have to ask, "Why do I choose a certain moment to play something a certain way?" It's organic to who we are.

When one starts writing a book, especially a novel, even the humblest person in the world hopes to become Homer.