Very early in life I became fascinated with the wonders language can achieve. And I began playing with words.

Do not desire to fit in. Desire to oblige yourselves to lead.

We don't ask a flower any special reason for its existence. We just look at it and are able to accept it as being something different from ourselves.

I believe we should all know each other, we human carriers of so many pleasurable differences. To not know is to doubt, to shrink from, sidestep or destroy.

Reading is important - read between the lines. Don't swallow everything.

We are each other's harvest; we are each other's business; we are each other's magnitude and bond.

Don't let anyone call you a minority if you're black or Hispanic or belong to some other ethnic group. You're not less than anybody else.

I think there are things for all of us to do as long as we're here and we're healthy.

Books are meat and medicine and flame and flight and flower steel, stitch, cloud and clout, and drumbeats on the air.

Truth-tellers are not always palatable. There is a preference for candy bars.

Exhaust the little moment. Soon it dies. And be it gash or gold it will not come again in this identical guise.

The story is about being loyal to the truth as a nation, that citizens of a democracy are collectively responsible for what their troops do in war, good or bad.

The idea of freedom is a piece of dry bread thrown to people so that they can break their teeth with it.

The biggest problem is people are afraid of poetry, think they can't understand it or that it will be boring.

Wisdom is the mind what health is to the body.

Liberty is the soul's right to breathe and, when it cannot take a long breath, laws are girdled too tight.

Cats gotta scratch. Dogs gotta bite. I gotta write.

The fool strikes. The wise man smiles, and watches, and learns. Then strikes.

Money is the anthem, of succes, so put on your mascara and your party dress

The only thing worse than a bad review from the Ayatollah Khomeini would be a good review from the Ayatollah Khomeini.

No man is happy but by comparison.