The biggest problem has been exhaustion. I've spent about 6 of the last 14 years completely bedridden.

This self-respect and sense of self-worth, the innermost armament of the soul, lies at the heart of humanness; to be deprived of it is to be dehumanized, to be cleaved from, and cast below, mankind.

People think I must have been turning cartwheels on the night I sealed the movie deal - which was only two days after sealing the book deal - but I was really quite terrified.

I think authors can get into trouble viewing the subject matter as their turf

It's easy to talk to a horse if you understand his language. Horses stay the same from the day they are born until the day they die. They are only changed by the way people treat them.

The paradox of vengefulness is that it makes men dependent upon those who have harmed them, believing that their release from pain will come only when their tormentors suffer.

For me, being a writer was never a choice. I was born one. All through my childhood I wrote short stories and stuffed them in drawers. I wrote on everything. I didn't do my homework so I could write

Without dignity, identity is erased. In its absence, men are defined not by themselves, but by their captors and the circumstances in which they are forced to live.

Without dignity, identity is erased.

I just thought I was empty and now I'm being filled...and I just wanted to keep being filled.

His books were the closest thing he had to furniture and he lived in them the way other men live in easy chairs.

My life is a fairytale stuck at the climax.

'Tis not a lip, or eye, we beauty call, But the joint force and full result of all.

Chefs are fond of hyperbole, so they can certainly talk that way. But on the whole, I think they probably have a more open mind than most people.

Are We Going to die in our religion or are we going to die in our devotion?

Children and dogs are as necessary to the welfare of the country as Wall Street and the railroads.

we give each other a smile with a future in it

Why do we have such a finite capacity for pleasure but an infinite one for pain?

Drawing is the skeleton of what you do and color is its flesh.

I can’t on my own change the regime in South Africa or teach the Palestinians to learn to live with the Israelies, but I can start with me.

I went from working with Will Smith to working with Will Smith's wife. So the Smiths have been very good to me.