Only where there is language is there world.

The connections between and among women are the most feared, the most problematic, and the most potentially transforming force on the planet.

Change is not a threat to your life, but an invitation to live.

There must be those among whom we can sit down and weep and still be counted as warriors.

My heart is moved by all I cannot save: so much has been destroyed I have to cast my lot with those who age after age, perversely, with no extraordinary power, reconstitute the world.

We must use what we have to invent what we desire.

Courage is not defined by those who fought and did not fall, but by those who fought, fell and rose again.

The beauty of darkness is how it lets you see.

If you are trying to transform a brutalized society into one where people can live in dignity and hope, you begin with the empowering of the most powerless. You build from the ground up.

Until we know the assumptions in which we are drenched, we cannot know ourselves.

Language is power... Language can be used as a means of changing reality.

It is possible to provide security against other ills, but as far as death is concerned, we men live in a city without walls.

The vision that the founding fathers had of rule of law and equality before the law and no one above the law, that is a very viable vision, but instead of that, we have quasi mob rule.

Tell me what you feel in your room when the full moon is shining in upon you and your lamp is dying out, and I will tell you how old you are, and I shall know if you are happy.

Desperation is a necessary ingredient to learning anything, or creating anything. Period. If you ain't desperate at some point, you ain't interesting.

The Pacific Northwest, and particularly Whidbey Island, is extremely suited to be a location in a novel.

Without philosophy, history is always for me dead and dumb.

I think feature film can be quite conservative, because you have to now get audiences to come out, and it's quite a hard thing to do. Of course, television can be conservative too.

When I first joined SAG, there was another John Reilly. My dad was John Reilly, too, but growing up I was John John. Nobody in life calls me John C. It's more like, "Hey you, Step Brother!"

There's no longer a monolithic evil empire somewhere, spreading a different philosophy of life. That doesn't exist.

I don't like drawing characters facing right. If I tried to do that at a book signing, I'd have to pencil it first.