People from Europe and people from Africa encountered one another long before the invention of "Europe" and "Africa" and "white people" and "black people."

I can see criticizing, complaining, protesting - anything but choosing not to vote. Too many people died for us not to vote.

Criticism shouldn't be a performance that upstages the work it's talking about.

Home is the place where there is somebody who does not wish you any pain.

You can get away with anything as long as it works.

I think at the beginning of one's writing life, negative reviews are what one does to get attention and stake out your territory. It's also often a mistake.

It's not nothing when you're abroad and you don't have a washing machine.

The rise of fascism in Europe sent most Americans home. Some black American communists who had emigrated to the Soviet Union perished in Stalin's purges of the late 1930s.

If you're bored, your readers will be bored. If you're faking it, you won't get the kind of readers you want.

I can see Obama trying to be the president who suggests solutions for everyone who has experienced economic hardship.

Europe was a very contentious subject in literature and yet jazz musicians still depended on Europe. Now it's not such a big deal.

In this age, lies were the universal lubricant of the culture. A love of Truth and commitment to it were seldom rewarded and were often punished.

he imagined fate as a goddess, capricious and fickle, or as a river, which could flood at any moment

When searching for justice, what you sometimes find is just more trouble.

Logically, harmony must come from the heart... Harmony very much based on trust. As soon as use force, creates fear. Fear and trust cannot go together.

He clings to his solitude, to his affected indifference and his grown-up ways, but it's just an act, so as never, never to show his real feelings.

My father really taught me that you really develop the habit of writing and you sit down at the same time every day, you don't wait for inspiration.

I'm 64 years old, and I've been acting now for 42 years. Only recently have I thought to myself, 'Hmmm, it may be interesting to start directing.'

I thought I might write mysteries for the rest of my life.

I have always deeply desired to be an honest man who said it when I struggled, stumbled and worried. I longed to be a man with real friends - friends who knew me at my worst and loved me.

There is no sure foundation set on blood, No certain life achieved by others' death.