Writing a novel is like driving a car at night. Sometimes you run over a drunk who's lain down and fallen asleep on the warm pavement. I mean, do you keep going, or what?

I did have a feeling then that the culture of factuality was so dominating that storytelling had lost all its authority.

Every major work of art is a transgression, but the artist is not necessarily, by nature, a transgressor.

Writing is like driving at night in the fog. You can only see as far as your headlights, but you can make the whole trip that way.

The theory of the teacher with all these immigrant kids was that if you spoke English loudly enough they would eventually understand.

The difference between Socrates and Jesus is that no one had ever been put to death in Socrates' name. And that is because Socrates' ideas were never made law. Law, in whatever name, protects privilege.

And though the newspapers called the shooting the Crime of the Century, Goldman knew it was only 1906 and there were ninety-four years to go.