The citizen can bring our political and governmental institutions back to life, make them responsive and accountable, and keep them honest. No one else can.

Self pity is easily the most destructive of the non-pharmaceutical narcotics; it is addictive, gives momentary pleasure and separates the victim from reality.

Talking, talking. Spinning a web of words, pale walls of dreams, between myself and all I see.

We read five words on the first page of a really good novel and we begin to forget that we are reading printed words on a page; we begin to see images.

What art ought to do is tell stories which are moment-by-moment wonderful, which are true to human experience, and which in no way explain human experience.

Fiction does not spring into the world fully grown, like Athena. It is the process of writing and rewriting that makes a fiction original, if not profound.

Art, of course, is a way of thinking, a way of mining reality.

As a rule of thumb I say, if Socrates, Jesus and Tolstoy wouldn't do it, don't.

When people are serving, life is no longer meaningless.

One of the many interesting challenges nature presents us is its apparent disinterest in maintaining the order humans crave.

One must be just a little crazy to write a great novel. One must be capable of allowing the darkest, most ancient and shrewd parts of one’s being to take over the work from time to time.

The world we write is but a dappled expression of the one in which we live.

Paris is the only city in the world where starving to death is still considered an art.

My strengths propel me and my weaknesses pursue me.

You learned to run from what you feel, and that's why you have nightmares. To deny is to invite madness. To accept is to control.

Those who say they will forgive but can't forget, simply bury the hatchet but leave the handle out for immediate use.

You would think that Freddy Couples-Nick Price would be the team to beat, but I'll tell you in skins, it's a matter of just hitting it at the right time.

We must take care that globalization does not become something people become afraid of.

You're probably on the right track if you feel like a sidewalk worm during a rainstorm.

Never lose perspective on where you are and what you've got. And how you got it.

A civilization in which there is not a continuous controversy about important issues is on the way to totalitarianism and death