When it comes time to do your own life you either perpetuate your childhood or you stand on it and finally kick it out from under.

When it comes time to do your own life, you either perpetuate your childhood or you stand on it and finally kick it out from under.

Many of us write because we are readers and have grown up in a long tradition, and we want to be able to add to that extraordinary flow of interpretations of the world.

The pity of living only once is that there is no way, ever, to be sure which sorrows are inevitable.

All schoolchildren are hostages to red tape and fiscal insufficiency.

[On book promotion:] The reward for writing well appears to be not to be able to do it for a long time.

They are the kind of people who are embarrassed by money, a dead middle-class giveaway. Poor people are not embarrassed by money and are contemptuous of those who are.

I went away in my head, into a book. That was where I went whenever real life was too hard or too inflexible.

Worry never robs tomorrow of its sorrow but only saps today of its strength.

There's talent on the streets, kids with ideas who have stories to tell and never get a chance.

Shame is, hands down, the most uncomfortable feeling. And, because it produces continuous amounts of inflammatory chemicals in the body, it is also a health risk.

Happiness is to take up the struggle in the midst of the raging storm and not to pluck the lute in the moonlight or recite poetry among the blossoms.

I never use a telephoto lens. I need to be close to people. I need their complicity; I need them to be aware that I am there taking their picture. I hate paparazzi.

With a little more deliberation in the choice of their pursuits, all men would perhaps become essentially students and observers, for certainly their nature and destiny are interesting to all alike.

I'm underrated, don't fit on nobody's playlist / If I ain't in your top 10, then you're a racist.

TNC was once limited by the resources it could directly marshal to buy land. But teaching people a new idea is incredibly more scalable.

Had the jury convicted on proper instructions it would be the end of the matter. But juries are not bound by what seems inescapable logic to judges.