Art is the highest expression of the human spirit.

The greatest realities are physical and economic, all the subtleties of life come afterward.

We are linked by blood, and blood is memory without language.

I have beliefs, of course, like everyone-but I don't always believe in them.

Loneliness is dangerous ... because if aloneness does not lead to God, it leads to the devil. It leads to the self.

Homo sapiens is the species that invents symbols in which to invest passion and authority, then forgets that symbols are inventions.

Only when you have completed a novel, or a story, can you return to the beginning and revise or rewrite.

Getting the first draft finished is like pushing a peanut with your nose across a very dirty floor.

Cherie, keep walking. Shut your eyes. We are headed for the bridge. We are going to cross it.

The worst thing: to give yourself away in exchange for not enough love.

Read widely, and without apology. Read what you want to read, not what someone tells you you should read.

Keep a light, hopeful heart. But ­expect the worst.

How lovely this world is, really: one simply has to look.

There is nothing "ordinary" about reality.

I never change, I simply become more myself.

It's where we go, and what we do when we get there, that tells us who we really are.

I was sympathetic to virtually all groups that wanted to get away from the old system.

I think segregation is bad, I think it's wrong, it's immoral. I'd fight against it with every breath in my body, but you don't need to sit next to a white person to learn how to read and write. The NAACP needs to say that.

I'd been very partial to Malcolm X, particularly his self-help teachings.