The first person I ever cared deeply and sincerely about was - myself.

Almost anyone who has ever attained any kind of public stature in his or her profession can expect sometimes to see a reflection in a cracked mirror.

where is the 'punch' in sweetness and light?

A seed only realizes its potential the day you bury it.

Before we're born we've all of us been dead for millions of years...but we're always afraid of going back...

Following your heart is the best decision you will ever make.

Anything can happen: anything. Or nothing. Who can say? The world, monstrous, is made that way, and in the end consumes us all. Who am I, administrated or no, to have the audacity to survive it?

Nonviolence is really tough. You don't practice nonviolence at conferences; you practice it on picket-lines.

It is kind of tedious after a while, to parse politicians doing the same thing over and over again. The facts change from week to week, but the sort of masquerade doesn't.

I agree with Dante, that the hottest places in hell are reserved for those who in a period of moral crisis maintain their neutrality. There comes a time when silence becomes betrayal.

I always say that if you're a novelist, the challenge is not writing what you think ought to happen, but trying in some way to write what did happen in a world that doesn't necessarily exist.

When I have tried and failed, I shall have failed.

I like to think of myself as a fiction writer who liked art enough to write about it for a while, and then went on to his fiction.