Recognize yourself in he and she who are not like you and me.

Don't classify me, read me. I'm a writer, not a genre.

Writing is a struggle against silence.

The United States has written the white history of the United States. It now needs to write the black, Latino, Indian, Asian and Caribbean history of the United States.

Art gives life to what history killed. Art gives voice to what history denied, silenced, or persecuted. Art brings truth to the lies of history.

I need, therefore I imagine.

One wants to tell a story, like Scheherezade, in order not to die. It's one of the oldest urges in mankind. It's a way of stalling death.

What's happened at the Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq is one of the grossest violations of human rights under the Geneva Conventions that we have record of. It is simply monstrous.

Literature overtakes history, for literature gives you more than one life. It expands experience and opens new opportunities to readers.

You start by writing to live. You end by writing so as not to die.

Culture consists of connections, not of separations: to specialize is to isolate.

Because he was suffering doubts about himself and his future, Adams may have felt comfort demeaning the behavior and the character of women.

Don't throw a baby at anything - even a burglar.

Rise early, that by habit it may become familiar, agreeable, healthy, and profitable.

The wretched of the earth do not decide to become extinct, they resolve, on the contrary, to multiply: life is their weapon against life, life is all that they have.

Probems must be resolved at the level beneath the one at which they occur.

One could go on revising a prose page forever whereas there is a point in a poem when one knows it is done forever.

I've been a hunter pretty much all my life.

You should be able to use your intellect and not to be dominated by your intellect.

To talk to someone who does not listen is enough to tense the devil.