Mine [parents] started out more from scratch, because I'm constantly aware of what they suffered in the war.

We write out of revenge against reality, to dream and enter the lives of others.

One learns much more by writing fiction, because the insights come from those deeper subconscious levels where the greater and more interesting truths lie.

Americans and their desire to be novelists, the American novel should be listed in medical dictionaries alongside Megalomania and Obsessional Neuroses.

Only friends will tell you the truths you need to hear to make your life bearable.

Why are there no great women artists?' sounds as ignorant of human geography as the query 'Why are there no Eskimo tennis teams?

I shall never cease to marvel at the way we beg for love and tyranny.

All our parents have levels of deviousness. We're driven to write about this discrepancy between the bright shining selves they invented and the monsters lurking underneath.

Art is both a vengeance against reality and a reconciliation with it.

I venture that those of us who are most serene when faced with the possibility of nothingness are the ones who've reached furthest to the downward and upward of their beings.

As to why people like Joseph Lelyveld are writing memoirs, I think they're just catching on the coattails of the trend.

I can no more understand the totality of God than the pancake I made for breakfast understands the complexity of me

Independence means you decide according to the law and the facts.

Let nothing be called natural In an age of bloody confusion, Ordered disorder, planned caprice, And dehumanized humanity, lest all things Be held unalterable!

Prajñāpāramitā Buddhism is not a religion suitable for the brainless

Each disaster became a steppingstone for growth.

Nature has neither kernel Nor shell

The trouble with a movie is that it's old before it's released. It's no accident that it comes in a can.

We are all in it together. This is a war. We take a few shots and it will be over. We will give them a few shots and it will be over.

The Kingdom of Heaven, O man, requires no other price than yourself. The value of it is yourself. Give yourself for it and you shall have it.

I love Bill Clinton. I think we should make him king. I'm talking the red robe, the turkey leg - everything.