The function of socialism is to raise suffering to a higher level.

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.

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.

I'm hostile to men, I'm hostile to women, I'm hostile to cats, to poor cockroaches, I'm afraid of horses.

Every generation gets a chance to change the world Pity the nation that won't listen to your boys and girls Cos the sweetest melody is the one we haven't heard

I don't judge in my books. I don't have to have the antagonist get shot or the protagonist win. It's just how it comes out. I'm just telling a story.

A single gnomic line can come to resonate with centuries of subsequent wisdom.

The consciousness-raising, the advocacy, the passion, the youth of your movement is so critical.

Folks are obviously reluctant to do things that they don't feel comfortable with, and the conservative nature of the state is such that they can understand property rights.

If we're going to affect policy, or affect attitudes, for me, the adults have always been the target population.

You've got to find what you love. And that is as true for your work as it is for your lovers.

AIDS occupies such a large part in our awareness because of what it has been taken to represent. It seems the very model of all the catastrophes privileged populations feel await them.

I am teaching you now about it, but how many of you will practice it?

I’ve never been shy or secretive with the fact that if you walk into my life, you may be walking onto a record.