No matter where you go, poor people have the capacity to endure. Some people even compliment us on it, as if endurance is all we can achieve.

I’m always looking for the monster. Not even just in horror. I want them in everything. Just give me the monsters. Logical conclusions don’t satisfy. Monsters satisfy, absolutely.

Empathy is what separates human beings from teenage boys.

There are really only two ways to react to the extraordinary. The first is to ponder the grand purpose until all the fun is sucked away, the second is to enjoy it.

A little style is a good thing, but you can’t trust a person who won’t be ugly in front of you.

The best writing deadlines are poverty and death.

People who move to New York always the same mistake. They can't see the place.

Doubt is the big machine. It grinds up the delusions of women and men.

I have my teachers who tell me what to do. I'm not quite old enough yet to be truly independent.

Nearly everyone could be undone by an old woman's displeasure.

The poor aren't defeated. We're domesticated.

Religion is about hospitality and responsibility, and about neighbor/enemy-love-as-self-love in a Christian term that requires one to turn a new _gaze_ onto others––what I call a _cosmopolitan gaze_.

When people don't gossip or talk about you, you are not making waves.

No doing without some ruing.

America is a land of taxation that was founded to avoid taxation.

While children are struggling to be unique, the world around them is trying all means to make them look like everybody else.

I was involved in school plays, but when I left school I did a couple of odd jobs as a baker's apprentice and then as a fruit market porter in Manchester

Weeds are luckier than flowers because they are not killed for their beauties!

But myth is something else than an explanation of the world, of history, and of destiny.

I don't keep any copies of my books in the house - they go to my mum's flat. I don't like them around.

Building a better you is the first step to building a better America.