Sarcasm doesn't appear to work on him. If that's true, I'm in trouble: It's my normal mode of communication.

Why did they come billions of miles just to stare at us? It's rude.

But hope is no less realistic than despair. It is still our choice whether to live in light or lie down in darkness.

Even the most sensitive person can get used to even the most insensitive thing. Cruelty isn’t a personality trait. Cruelty is a habit.

You know how sometimes you tell yourself that you have a choice, but really you don't have a choice? Just because there are alternatives doesn't mean they apply to you.

Sometimes in my tent, late at night, I think I can hear the stars scraping against the sky.

So often the monsters that crowd our minds are nothing more than the strange and thoroughly alien progeny of our own fearful fantasies.

You are the nest. You are the hatchling. You are the chrysalis. You are the progeny. You are the rot that falls from stars. You may not understand what I mean. You will.

You can only call someone crazy if there’s someone else who’s normal. Like good and evil. If everything was good, then nothing would be good.

It's almost dawn. You can feel it coming. The world holds its breath, because there's really no guarantee that the sun will rise. That there was a yesterday doesn't mean there will be a tomorrow.

It's hard to plan for what comes next when what comes next is not something you planned for.

You wearing a thigh sheath?”“Now what would be the sense of wearing just one? I have two thighs.

All the joy the world contains has come through wishing happiness for others. All the misery the world contains has come through wanting pleasure for oneself. Is there need for lengthy explanation?

You're safe now.

My mother was told she couldn't go to medical school because she was a woman and a Jew. So she became a teacher in the New York City public school system.

Men and women, women and men. It will never work.

I think auditioning can be very reductive and I just hate how actors work really hard and most of them aren't going to get the job, and I hate putting them through that.

The future is carved out of the present moment. Tomorrow's harvest depends upon today's ploughing and sowing.

One person can keep a secret, but not two.

The merit of Mahomet is that he founded a religion without an inferno.

It was a revelation for me, in a practical sense, that you could write in an African language and still reach an audience beyond that language through the art of translation.