Love takes off the masks that we fear we cannot live without and know we cannot live within. I use the word "love" here not merely in the personal sense but as a state of being, or a state of grace - not in the infantile American sense of being made happy but in the tough and universal sense of quest and daring and growth.

The writer's only real task: to recreate out of the disorder of life that order which is art

People can cry much easier than they can change, a rule of psychology people like me picked up as kids on the street.

In the invincible and indescribable squalor of Harlem ... I was tormented. I felt caged, like an animal. I wanted to escape. I felt if I did not get out I would slowly strangle.

Everything in life depends on how that life accepts its limits.

If all you want to do is make money, the very last thing you need is imagination.

James Joyce is right about history being a nightmare-- but it may be that nightmare from which no one can awaken. People are trapped in history and history in trapped in them.