The people I've known who wanted to become writers, knowing what it meant, did become writers.

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.

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.

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.

Today, at Harvard, any student with the currently fashionable color of skin is given rights denied to students of the currently unfashionable color.

The world is a wheel. When we rise or fall, we do it together.

I'll be wearing my high heels, even if I'm up to my knees in mud

I have four children, and I want them to grow up in a country that has a working First Amendment.

At extremely high processing speeds we are able to find patterns of order in what other people would perceive as chaos.

The human race will be the cancer of the planet.

I like Chris Rock. He's dangerous.

I may not hope from outward forms to win / The passion and the life, whose fountains are within.

We hate Chicago and Chicago hates us and unfortunately he's on the other team and he's the big gun.

I spend a lot of time thinking of the Hereafter - each time I enter a room I wonder what I'm here after.