Language can never 'pin down' slavery, genocide, war. Nor should it yearn for the arrogance to be able to do so. Its force, its felicity, is in its reach toward the ineffable.

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.

But if we are truly happy inside, then age brings with it a maturity, a depth, and a power that only magnifies our radiance.

We must look for consistency. Where there is a want of it we must suspect deception.

There is so much more than we can see, there is so much more that we can be.

I see the shape of the poem before I start writing, and the writing is just the process of arriving at the shape.

One of the things that I think you see sometimes in politics is a certain degree of caution. It's usually advised by consultants who don't want to see you march to the end of a limb.

The value of life itself cannot be estimated.

I have learned a lot about myself and come to deal with a lot of things that, at first, bothered me.

The more traditional bride still prefers white or ivory, but the young girls... seem to like the idea of using colors.

What tends to happen in most movies is that strip clubs are used as a short hand for unsympathetic, sleazy people. And that's just a lazy cliché.

Only the best are bullied.