We will live with racism for ever. But senses of self, senses of belonging, senses of us and of others? Those are up for grabs.

What I really like to learn how to do is to build sentences that are equal to mental states.

When you're sure of what you're looking at, look harder.

Librarian is a service occupation. Gas station attendant of the mind.

Reading is the last act of secular prayer.

All we can ever do is lay a word in the hands of those who have put one in ours.

The job of taste was to thin the insane torrent of human creativity down to manageable levels. But the job of appetite was never to be happy with taste.

I write the way you might arrange flowers. Not every try works, but each one launches another. Every constraint, even dullness, frees up a new design.

I'd like, each time out as a writer, to reinvent who I am and what I'm doing. That's one of the great pleasures and rewards of the occupation.

I would say the flip side to my fascination with systems is a fascination with components. So many of my books are dialogues between little and big.

The use of music is to remind us how short a time we have a body.

Men love pleasure. but women desire purposeful commitment.

A scattered mind will produce scattered results.

Self Respect " respects boundaries, yours or other's, "Ego" is so full of self, it sees no boundaries.

There are two sides to self-discovery, as in most things, an outer more popular side and an inner side. The popular side presents more of a simplified form.

It is much easier to be flexible about where a story begins than it ever was for me to change my mind about where and how a story ended.

Compassion doesn't, of course, mean feeling sorry for people, or pity, which is how the word has become emasculated in a way.

It's not easy to be Light when you've been Dark. It's almost too much to ask anyone. -Macon Ravenwood

A few good compliments produce a wealth of good and often financial benefits.

It won't be easy, that is why I have always failed where others have succeeded.

Nothing is more dangerous than a dogmatic worldview - nothing more constraining, more blinding to innovation, more destructive of openness to novelty.