Memory is a mirror that scandalously lies.

All profound distraction opens certain doors. You have to allow yourself to be distracted when you are unable to concentrate.

In quoting others, we cite ourselves.

Wordplay hides a key to reality that the dictionary tries in vain to lock inside every free word.

(memory is) A strange echo, which stores its replicas according to some other acoustic than consciousness or expectation.

The modern story begun, one might say, with Edgar Allan Poe, which proceeds inexorably, like a machine destined to accomplish its mission with the maximum economy of means.

We no longer believe because it is absurd: it is absurd because we must believe.

For me the thing that signals a great story is what we might call its autonomy, the fact that it detaches itself from its author like a soap bubble blown from a clay pipe.

I think it is vanity to want to put into a story anything but the story itself.

The more a book is like an opium pipe, the more the Chinaman reader is satisfied with it and tends to discuss the quality of the drug rather than its lethargic effects.

Nothing is more comical than seriousness understood as a virtue that has to precede all important literature

You see, I had been riding with the storm clouds, and had come to earth as rain, and it was drought that I had killed with the power that the Six Grandfathers gave me.

When you're black, you have to deal with so much crap in your life from other black people. It's a dirty, dark secret; I'm glad it's coming out.

Nothing matters except life and the love you make.

Your deep interests should always have a dog-eared place on your nightstand.

They call it 'surfing' the net. It's not surfing. It's typing in your bedroom

I'm thrilled with how my career is evolving.

All this has been very formative in both my research and my teaching, so I value it enormously in my life. It's why I'm a strong proponent of general education -- because I saw how it opened my eyes.

What we're all striving for is authenticity, a spirit-to-spirit connection.

Necessity invented stools, Convenience next suggested elbow-chairs, And luxury the accomplish'd Sofa last.