Why am I as I am? To understand that of any person, his whole life, fromBirth must be reviewed. All of our experiences fuse into our personality. Everything that ever happened to us is an ingredient.

One day, may we all meet together in the light of understanding.

The ability to read awoke inside of me some long dormant craving to be mentally alive.

Right now, in every big city ghetto, tens of thousands of yesterday's and today's school dropouts are keeping body and soul together by some form of hustling in the same way I did.

So early in my life, I had learned that if you want something, you had better make some noise.

I imagine that one of the biggest troubles with colleges is there are too many distractions, too much panty-raiding, fraternities, and boola-boola and all of that.

Never ask a woman about other men.Either she'll tell you a lie, and you still won't know, or if she tells you the truth, you might not have wanted to hear it in the first place.

He said, one time, that no true leader burdened his followers with a greater load than they could carry, and no true leader sets too fast a pace for his follows to keep up.

All of us - who might have probed space, or cured cancer, or built industries - were, instead, black victims of the white man's American social system.

Always, every now and then, I had given her a hard time, just to keep her in line. Every once in a while a woman seems to need, in fact wants this too.

How is it possible to write one's autobiography in a world so fast-changing as this?

As a human race, we lost and we are still losing a lot of humanity in the process of progress

The element of craftsmanship in poetry is obscured by the fact that all men are taught to speak and most to read and write, while very few men are taught to draw or paint or write music.

... Once I start a book I finish it. That was the way one was brought up. Books, bread and butter, mashed potato - one finishes what's on one's plate. That's always been my philosophy.

The dream police will not let me have sexual fantasies.

'Groundhog Day' was one of the greatest scripts ever written. It didn't even get nominated for an Academy Award.

[on Emilio Estevez] Truly, my first love.

Look at what's happening, how Iran is taunting us. Look at what's going on, look at the world.

I've been really lucky. People have been nice to me on the internet. That's the reason why I couldn't figure out what was wrong with me.

As the arrow endures the string, and in the gathering momentum becomes more than itself. Because to stay is to be nowhere.

I try very hard to be fair, and I look for ironies. In a way, I live on ironies as a novelist.