It was books that taught me that the things that tormented me most were the very things that connected me with all the people who were alive, or who had ever been alive.

To ask questions of the universe, and then learn to live with those questions, is the way he achieves his own identity.

Money, it turned out, was exactly like sex, you thought of nothing else if you didn't have it and thought of other things if you did.

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

A real writer is always shifting and changing and searching.

Trust life, and it will teach you, in joy and sorrow, all you need to know.

The only thing that white people have that black people need, or should want, is power-and no one holds power forever.