Your pretty empire took so long to build, now, with a snap of history's fingers, down it goes.

There's no flesh or blood within this cloak to kill. There's only an idea. Ideas are bulletproof.

Behind this mask there is more than just flesh. Beneath this mask there is an idea... and ideas are bulletproof.

You wear a mask for so long, you forget who you were beneath it.

People shouldn't be afraid of their government. Governments should be afraid of their people.

Authority, when first detecting chaos at its heels, will entertain the vilest schemes to save its orderly facade.

Authority allows two roles: the torturer and the tortured. Twists people into joyless mannequins that fear and hate, while culture plunges into the abyss.

Artists use lies to tell the truth. Yes, I created a lie. But because you believed it, you found something true about yourself.

Everybody is special. Everybody. Everybody is a hero, a lover, a fool, a villain. Everybody. Everybody has their story to tell.

Knowledge, like air, is vital to life. Like air, no one should be denied it.

Our masters have not heard the people's voice for generations and it is much, much louder than they care to remember.

When I was growing up, they had just found radio.

One similarity I see between peers and some of the people who read my books is that comics were definitely an outlet for us.

Feeling comes before reflection.

Certain brief sentences are peerless in their ability to give one the feeling that nothing remains to be said.

It starts with vision, and the clarity of vision

I've always been a writer because I've always been a student. My mom's a retired professor, so I come from a very academic background. I love writing, you know?

Bad things happen everyday but you're not going to be any happier thinking about them. So I don't think about them.

I love eulogies. They are the most moving kind of speech because they attempt to pluck meaning from the fog, and on short order, when the emotions are still ragged and raw and susceptible to leaps.

Any person without invincible prejudice who had the same experience would come to the same broad conclusion, viz., that things hitherto held impossible do actually occur.

The older I get, the more I look at movies as a moving miracle.