The desire for success lubricates secret prostitution in the soul.

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.

Spirituality is for people. It’s not just for those who you might have read about in books, it’s for people.

My dear young cousin, if there's one thing I've learned over the eons, it's that you can't give up on your family, no matter how tempting they make it.

When you please others in hopes of being accepted, you lose your self-worth in the process.

Ah, we men and women are like ropes drawn tight with strain that pull us in different directions.

Jace wasn’t exactly prone to random fits of panic

First, you must love yourself. And if you do that convincingly enough, others will love you too much.

God will not have his work made manifest by cowards

When you pose for a photograph, it's behind a smile that isn't yours. You are angry and hungry and alive. What I value in you is that intensity. I want to make portraits as intense as people.

There is a certain combination of anarchy and discipline in the way I work.

You have to be there at the right time and you've got to be equipped.