To ask a child to feel sympathy for the poor is harder than getting him to feel sympathy for a chicken or a goat—at least you can see a goat being slaughtered.

What if I've died a long time ago and come here? he wondered. What if the defining characteristic of hell is that you're locked in an endless, blind battle to reform it?

The roots of shame run deep.

Every child is a packet of disappointments, hurts, dangers.

Like men who have failed together, they wanted nothing more than to never see each other again.

No action is safe from meaning.

Every way he turned, his past was detonated, revealing tunnels and alternative routes under the packed, settled earth of the present.

Silence is the small man’s only defense.

Artists, who are selfish people, become anxious around the self-sacrificing

In sitting on the meditation cushion and assuming the meditation posture, we connect ourselves with the present moment in this body and on this earth.

With great power... comes need to take a nap. Wake me up later

I think if you're able to do over the course of your career 20, 30, 50 very wonderful rich characters, you'd rather have that than an Oscar.

If they ever do my life story, whoever plays me needs lots of hair color and high heels.

If you don’t tell people about your success, they probably won’t know about it.

Any writer who pretends to a disaffection for recognition, I think they're being duplicitous.

You are your own Promised Land, your own new frontier.

Dweller in yon dungeon dark, Hangman of creation, mark! Who in widow weeds appears, Laden with unhonoured years, Noosing with care a bursting purse, Baited with many a deadly curse?

though he does not touch me, he steadies me.

A corporation, essentially, is a pile of money to which a number of persons have sold their moral allegiance.