Use beautiful to describe a sandwich, and the word means nothing.

Life, he thought, is a blatant act of imagination.

What business does memory have with time?

He wished he could reassure his mother: a man wants many things in life, but when one of them is also the right thing, he would be a fool not to choose it.

He considered it a shame when people couldn't grasp the infinite-a failure not just of imagination but of simple vision.

We live in a world of banal miracles.

He found himself inhabiting the vast, empty plateau where most people live, between boredom and contentment.

Two kinds of people always lie about their ages: actresses and Latin American pitchers.

Always speak first to the toughest person in the room.

The movie I was working on, "Cleopatra", it's about how destructive a force love can be. But maybe that's what every story is about.

And while his mother's lecture had gone over his seven-year-old head, Pasquale saw now what she meant--how much easier life would be if our intentions and our desires could always be aligned.

Academics love to make theories about a body of work, but each book consumes the writer and is the sum of his or her world.

The dream is to keep surprising yourself, never mind the audience.

In a library, no empty shelf remains empty for long.

One wonders what would happen in a society where there were no rules to break. Doubtlessly everyone would quickly die of boredom.

Perhaps there can be no thanks nor any blame, but only recognition of the forces that brought us and bound us to our inevitable fates.

Like the crow among mankind are the Zanj [African Blacks] for they are the worst of men and the most vicious of creatures in character and temperament.

Stories make it possible for us to be human.

Every time I look at my children, they remind me to work harder and become a better man.

The virtues of a superior man are like the wind; the virtues of a common man are like the grass; the grass, when the wind passes over it, bends.

Laughter is life-giving. It makes you breathe.