The art of the novel is to arrive at that artless point where your characters become more real than yourself.

Writing books is the closest men ever come to childbearing.

A modern democracy is a tyranny whose borders are undefined; one discovers how far one can go only by traveling in a straight line until one is stopped.

The function of socialism is to raise suffering to a higher level.

Khomeini has offered us the opportunity to regain our frail religion ... faith in the power of words.

There was that law of life, so cruel and so just, that one must grow or else pay more for remaining the same.

Any war that requires the suspension of reason as a necessity for support is a bad war.

America is a hurricane, and the only people who do not hear the sound are those fortunate if incredibly stupid and smug White Protestants who live in the center, in the serene eye of the big wind.

I was thinking that surgeons had to be the happiest people on earth. To cut people up and get paid for it-that's happiness, I told myself.

Love asks us that we be a little braver than is comfortable, a little more generous, a little more flexible. It means living on the edge more than we care to.

Reaching consensus in a group is often confused with finding the right answer.

The written revelation of God is in the world, but men heed it not. Instead, they look for knowledge where it is not to be found.

All nature's diff'rence keeps all nature's peace.

Nature . . . is inexorable and immutable; she never transgresses the laws imposed upon her, nor cares a whit whether her abstruse reasons and methods of operations are understandable to men.

Thank God for unanswered prayers.

A lot of girls in L.A. just stand in the corner wondering 'Who's gonna talk to me? Who am I gonna diss?'

I think Canada, our industry is still somewhat based in America's industry.

Even championship-winning teams don't play well all the time.

What good is a prepared body if you have a scattered mind?

I've always been the high harmony singer. It's never my job to know the verses! But I know the chorus of every song ever made.