Society wants to believe it can identify evil people, or bad or harmful people, but it's not practical. There are no stereotypes.

I don't feel guilty for anything. I feel sorry for people who feel guilt.

Some people hate the smell of hospitals. I hate the smell of jails and prisons, all the same: stale cigarette smoke, Pine-Sol, urine, sweat, and dust.

That’s writing for you: when you make space for passion, it doesn’t turn up.

The trauma said, ‘Don’t write these poems.Nobody wants to hear you cry about the grief inside your bones.

I never thought that someday men will also use an iPAD.

Killing Japanese didn't bother me very much at that time... I suppose if I had lost the war, I would have been tried as a war criminal.

The correlations between real life experience and the storylines in novels are never as direct or simple as they might seem.

I think one of the best things you can do is write really sad songs that touch some semblance of... I guess 'hope' is the right word?

There's nothing that defines who you are more than boundaries, whether you cross them or not, in every aspect of your life, and horror is a really great boundary.

You have a race problem that must be solved, or else you will alienate every non-white person on this earth within the next few years, or within the next few months.

Good governance depends on ability to take responsibility by both administration as well as people.

Be you own hero, be your own saviour, send all your suffering into the fire. Let no foot, mark your ground, let no hand, hold you down.