[I write] intuitively, reflexively, as if skiing down a steep mountain slope with no time to think.

One of the things I'm going to say out there is how grateful I am - and how grateful the world is - for the tremendous gift of the black people, of jazz.

I'm not a drug salesman. I'm a writer." "What makes you think a writer isn't a drug salesman?

It was headquartered in Michigan City, a long way off. I never saw Ku Klux Klan march.

Trust a crowd to look at the wrong end of a miracle every time.

Einstein's E=mc2 is an extraordinary concept. So radical: matter and energy are two phases of the same sort of general stuff. There's only one other idea that radical: Forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those who trespass against us.

No art is possible without a dance with death.