It was as though we were a picture, trapped in time: this had been happening for hundreds of years, people sitting in a room, waiting for dinner, and listening to the blues.

If the concept of God has any validity or any use, it can only be to make us larger, freer, and more loving. If God cannot do this, then it is time we got rid of Him.

All art is a kind of confession, more or less oblique. All artists, if they are to survive, are forced, at last, to tell the whole story, to vomit the anguish up.

The male cannot bear very much humiliation; and he really cannot bear it, it obliterates him.

You write in order to change the world.

If the relationship of father to son could really be reduced to biology, the whole earth would blaze with the glory of fathers and sons.

Remember, to hate, to be violent, is demeaning. It means you're afraid of the other side of the coin -- to love and be loved.