[On writing to Alice Walker, author of The Color Purple:] I told her I would play a Venetian blind, dirt on the floor, anything.

In the dark times, if you have something to hold on to, which is yourself, you'll survive.

When you are kind to someone in trouble, you hope they'll remember and be kind to someone else. And it'll become like a wildfire.

We're here for a reason. I believe a bit of the reason is to throw little torches out to lead people through the dark.

Normal is nothing more than a cycle on a washing machine.

Art and life are subjective. Not everybody's gonna dig what I dig, but I reserve the right to dig it.

We're born with success. It is only others who point out our failures, and what they attribute to us as failure.

I always wore sneakers when I wanted to. It was always about being comfortable and being myself.

Children are a quality of life ... when our children are happy, then we are better as human beings.

It you want to be somebody, If you want to go some where, you've got to wake up and pay attention

It never occurs to me that there are things I can't do.

War is a pleasant name of Mass Murder

Tell the truth as you understand it. If you're a writer, you have a moral obligation to do this. And it is a revolutionary act - truth is always subversive.

For years everyone looked toward the demise of radio when television came along. Before that, they thought talking movies might eliminate radio as well. But radio just keeps getting stronger.

You have to be very brave and very entrepreneurial - you have to dare to create your own brand.

Any woman who marries an Italian must accept the undeniable fact that she has also married his mother.

Young people are more intelligent and sophisticated.

guess they forgot to program us with any respect for authority." "well, I have a highly developed sense of irony.

This led me to understand that trade unionism, the instrument of working-class liberation and of social change could, and indeed should, be also an instrument of industrial progress.

If smoking cigars is not permitted in heaven, I won''t go.

We're lost, but we're making good time.