The interior life is a real life, and the intangible dreams of people have a tangible effect on the world.

The challenge is in the moment; the time is always now.

When you’re writing, you’re trying to find out something which you don’t know. The whole language of writing for me is finding out what you don’t want to know, what you don’t want to find out. But something forces you to anyway.

The wretched of the earth do not decide to become extinct, they resolve, on the contrary, to multiply: life is their weapon against life, life is all that they have.

I am aware that no man is a villain in his own eyes.

The reason people think it's important to be white is that they think it's important not to be black.

Any writer, I suppose, feels that the world into which he was born is nothing less than a conspiracy against the cultivation of his talent.