Writing can wreck your body. You sit there on the chair hour after hour and sweat your guts out to get a few words.

Writing books is the closest men ever come to childbearing.

A modern democracy is a tyranny whose borders are undefined; one discovers how far one can go only by traveling in a straight line until one is stopped.

The function of socialism is to raise suffering to a higher level.

Khomeini has offered us the opportunity to regain our frail religion ... faith in the power of words.

There was that law of life, so cruel and so just, that one must grow or else pay more for remaining the same.

Any war that requires the suspension of reason as a necessity for support is a bad war.

America is a hurricane, and the only people who do not hear the sound are those fortunate if incredibly stupid and smug White Protestants who live in the center, in the serene eye of the big wind.

I was thinking that surgeons had to be the happiest people on earth. To cut people up and get paid for it-that's happiness, I told myself.

Love asks us that we be a little braver than is comfortable, a little more generous, a little more flexible. It means living on the edge more than we care to.

Reaching consensus in a group is often confused with finding the right answer.

The day of birth is a miraculous day.

When thought is too weak to be simply expressed it's clear proof that it should be rejected.

When I record, it feels like I'm in a bubble. There's nothing else in my head right then. It's just that song, and I'm trying to really sound like what the song is about.

There is no one so bound to his own face that he does not cherish the hope of presenting another to the world.

I never expected to be a model. I never expected to be a stylist. Or a designer.

I don't know if anything can really prepare you for 'Survivor,' but since I grew up as an athlete, the physical aspect came to me more easily.

We are not superior. There are no clear distinctions between us and animals.

Beef is not what Jay said to Nas; Beef is when the working folks can't find jobs.

The United States did not keep its promise to help us fight for freedom and it was in the same fight that the United States lost 50,000 of its young men.

Women have babies and men provide the support. If you don't like the way we're made you've got to take it up with God.