There is no moral authority like that of sacrifice.

September 2001. A sunny day in New York. Many of us who are writers were at work on the transformation of life into a poem, story, a chapter of a novel, when terror pounced from the sky, and the world made witness to it.

Art defies defeat by its very existence, representing the celebration of life, in spite of all attempts to degrade and destroy it.

Writing is making sense of life. You work your whole life and perhaps you've made sense of one small area.

Communists are the last optimists.

Writing is always a voyage of discovery.

All worthwhile writing... comes from an individual vision, privately pursued.