[Obama is ] creative imagination which coupled with brilliance equals wisdom . . . [He is] the man for this time.

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.

None of my costume designers have ever been nominated for an Oscar 'cause I don't do period movies that have ball scenes with a hundred extras in them.

Life is about making your own happiness - and living by your own rules.

What happened to the American Dream? It came true! You're lookin' at it

Starving for a high, a place to hang out inside my own head. Starving for touch. Pain, even. A way to feel. I need to feel.

The destiny of the colored American ... is the destiny of America.

When it's raining like this," said Naoko, "it feels as if we're the only ones in the world. I wish it would just keep raining so the three of us could stay together.

The force that was in the airport, this force was destroyed.

The mania started with insomnia and not eating and being driven, driven to find an apartment, driven to see everybody, driven to do New York, driven to never shut up.

Time's fatal wings do ever forward fly; To every day we live, a day we die.

Such is my love, to thee I so belong, That for thy right myself will bear all wrong.