The [political] left are people with an imagination and the right are those without an imagination.

Every single pleasure I can imagine or have experienced is more delightful, more of a pleasure, if you take it in small sips, if you take your time. Reading is not an exception.

Fundamentalist s live life with an exclamation point. I prefer to live my life with a question mark.

Writing a poem is like having an affair, a one-night stand; a short story is a romance, a relationship; a novel is a marriage-one has to be cunning, devise compromises, and make sacrifices.

Words create conceptions and self-conceptions and ultimately nations. They can start and stop wars. They can would and heal. Choosing words carefully is a moral responsibility.

A conflict begins and ends in the hearts and minds of people, not in the hilltops.

All of my novels are democracies.

The only way to keep a dream, any dream at all, to keep a dream perfect and rosy and intact and unsullied is never to live it out.

The opposite of compromise is not integrity. The opposite of compromise is not idealism. The opposite of compromise is fanaticism and death.

I wrote The Same Sea not as a political allegory about Israelis and Palestinians. I wrote it about something much more gutsy and immediate. I wrote it as a piece of chamber music.

Now, Israel is a fulfillment, and as a fulfillment, it is flawed. The fact that it is flawed is not so much a testimony about the failures of Israel. No, it is a testimony about the nature of dreams.

The fashion industry is no more able to preserve a style that men and women have decided to abandon than to introduce one they do not choose to accept.

The best way of leading people is to let them find their own way.

I'm planning on finishing the Gospels at some point.

I’m telling you, trouble is like the ocean. It covers two thirds of the world.

I had studied William Shakespeare in Oxford, England and I had this sort of high faluttin' education but I had also worked in comic books. So, I wasn't too proud to work in something like cartoons.

Color is like music. The palette is an instrument that can be orchestrated to build form.

Every time I see Anthony Hopkins I think that, to some extent, he has just been getting away with it all these years.

I'll never turn down a red velvet cupcake.

Teachers shouldn't make the mistake of always thinking they're the smartest person in the room

I had walked along that street all my life, but had never been so aware that my back was to my home