Writers have been in terrible situations and have yet managed to produce extraordinary work.

So Thomas Pynchon wants a private life and no photographs and nobody to know his home address. I can dig it, I can relate to that (but, like, he should try it when it's compulsory instead of a free-choice option).

Obviously, a rigid, blinkered, absolutist world view is the easiest to keep hold of, whereas the fluid, uncertain, metamorphic picture I've always carried about is rather more vulnerable.

The history of a culture can be determined by its untranslatable words.

It's true that the human body is more vulnerable than the products of the human mind.

I do think that there is such a thing as human nature, and that the things that we have in common are perhaps greater than the things that divide us.

Liberate yourself, because no one else is going to liberate you