The citizen takes his city for granted far too often. He forgets to marvel.

Don't classify me, read me. I'm a writer, not a genre.

Recognize yourself in he and she who are not like you and me.

Writing is a struggle against silence.

The United States has written the white history of the United States. It now needs to write the black, Latino, Indian, Asian and Caribbean history of the United States.

Art gives life to what history killed. Art gives voice to what history denied, silenced, or persecuted. Art brings truth to the lies of history.

I need, therefore I imagine.

One wants to tell a story, like Scheherezade, in order not to die. It's one of the oldest urges in mankind. It's a way of stalling death.

What's happened at the Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq is one of the grossest violations of human rights under the Geneva Conventions that we have record of. It is simply monstrous.

Literature overtakes history, for literature gives you more than one life. It expands experience and opens new opportunities to readers.

You start by writing to live. You end by writing so as not to die.

More and more I understand that it's very fine not to know where you come from.

Lessons are not given, they are taken.

I live in the same house I purchased in 1971 for $22,500. I think we need to increase the minimum wage and so all my neighbors can get an increase in their wages.

People don't really want to know the truth. The truth is that you are all dead in the future, everything that you do has no point, and all of the achievements of the human race are meaningless.

I've reminded the prime minister-the American people, Mr. Prime Minister, over the past months that it was not always a given that the United States and America would have a close relationship.

I don't like to shoot too many movies since I like to do them well.

This disaster did not force us to abandon our ideal; on the contrary, from the very first months of the conflict, it led us to define precisely the conditions for its realization.

I will never be able to go back to Sweden without knowing inside myself that I'd done all a man could do to save as many Jews as possible

Imagine people calling you to find out if you're dead. I've led a real crazy life at times, and I've had many strange things happen to me, but that was one of the strangest.

I do dream about Afghanistan. I wake up and think I'm still there.