Where do you get the right to decide our lives? I'll tell you where. From that little hog's gut that hangs between your legs. Well, let me tell you something... you will need more than that. I don't know where you will get it or who will give it to you, but mark my words, you will need more than that.... You are a sad, pitiful, stupid, selfish, hateful man. I hope your little hog's gut stands you in good stead, and you take good care of it, because you don't have anything else.

Can't nothing heal without pain, you know.

I always start out with an idea, even a boring idea, that becomes a question I don't have answers to.

All paradises, all utopias are designed by who is not there, by the people who are not allowed in.

Our ancestors are an ever widening circle of hope.

Freeing yourself was one thing; claiming ownership of that freed self was another.

In Tar Baby, the classic concept of the individual with a solid, coherent identity is eschewed for a model of identity which sees the individual as a kaleidoscope of heterogeneous impulses and desires, constructed from multiple forms of interaction with the world as a play of difference that cannot be completely comprehended.