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

There are some very powerful contributions to knowledge in the scientific world or the legal world, but art is singular. That's why every dictator gets rid of the artists first. They burn the books and execute the artists first. Then they get on with whatever else they're interested in. Art might do something. It's dangerous.

It's been mentioned or suggested that Paradise will not be well studied, because it's about this unimportant intellectual topic, which is religion.

From my point of view, which is that of a storyteller, I see your life as something artful, waiting, just waiting and ready for you to make it art.

Let your face speak what's in your heart.

She had been looking all along for a friend, and it took her a while to discover that a lover was not a comrade and could never be - for a woman. And that no one would ever be that version of herself which she sought to reach out to and touch with an ungloved hand. There was only her own mood and whim, and if that was all there was, she decided to turn the naked hand toward it, discover it and let others become as intimate with their own selves as she was.

He leans over and takes her hand. With the other he touches her face. ‘You your best thing, Sethe. You are.’ His holding fingers are holding hers. ‘Me? Me?