Whole interaction between the storyteller and the listeners had a very powerful influence on me.

All anyone can hope for is just a tiny bit of love, like a drop in a cup if you can get it, or a waterfall, a flood, if you can get that too.

Love is like the rain. It comes in a drizzle sometimes. Then it starts pouring and if you're not careful it will drown you.

Create dangerously, for people who read dangerously. ... Writing, knowing in part that no matter how trivial your words may seem, someday, somewhere, someone may risk his or her life to read them.

There is a frustration too, that at moments when there's not a coup, when there are not people in the streets, that the country disappears from people's consciousness.

When you write ,it's like braiding your hair. Taking a handful of coarse unruly strands and attempting to bring then unity.

It's not easy to start over in a new place,' he said. 'Exile is not for everyone. Someone has to stay behind, to receive the letters and greet family members when they come back.

People are just too hopeful, and sometimes hope is the biggest weapon of all to use against us. People will believe anything.

I think Haiti is a place that suffers so much from neglect that people only want to hear about it when it’s at its extreme. And that’s what they end up knowing about it.

Toni Cade Bambara said: “Writing is the way I participate in the struggle.”

Misery won't touch you gentle. It always leaves its thumbprints on you; sometimes it leaves them for others to see, sometimes for nobody but you to know of.

We are the people our parents warned us about.

If you have methods without principles, you're going to have trouble. But if you develop methods based on principles, then you can make progress.

Imagine working 20% smarter instead of 20% longer...Work-life balance and startup success at any stage aren't mutually exclusive. There are enough hours in the day to be effective and present.

No man will revel long in the indulgence of crime.

I try not to make any boundaries. I try to let all art influence me.

I've written and translated my own poems from English to German. It's basically a summation of my identity as it stands now.

Great movies are rarely perfect movies.

You will never succeed while smarting under the drudgery of your occupation, if you are constantly haunted with the idea that you could succeed better in something else.

It's critically important that people trust you during a public health crisis.

Repose is as necessary in conversation as in a picture.