The theme you choose may change or simply elude you, but being your own story means you can always choose the tone. It also means that you can invent the language to say who are you and what you mean.

The best art is political and you ought to be able to make it unquestionably political and irrevocably beautiful at the same time.

...the change was adjustment without improvement.

A bestseller is a book that non-book buyers buy

I tell my students there is such a thing as 'writer's block,' and they should respect it. You shouldn't write through it. It's blocked because it ought to be blocked, because you haven't got it right now.

Please don't settle for happiness. It's not good enough. Of course you deserve it, but if that's all you have in mind - happiness - I want to suggest to you that personal success devoid of meaningfulness, free of a steady commitment to social justice - that's more than a barren life. It's a trivial one.

The vitality of language lies in its ability to limn the actual, imagined and possible lives of its speakers, readers, writers.