I would solve a lot of literary problems just thinking about a character in the subway, where you can't do anything anyway.

In this country American means white. Everybody else has to hyphenate.

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.

the hopelessness that comes from knowing too little and feeling too much (so brittle, so dry he is in danger of the reverse: feeling nothing and knowing everything)

Make up a story... For our sake and yours forget your name in the street; tell us what the world has been to you in the dark places and in the light. Don't tell us what to believe, what to fear. Show us belief's wide skirt and the stitch that unravels fear's caul.

In becoming an American, from Europe, what one has in common with that other immigrant is contempt for me-it's nothing else but color.

The difference between that which is humane and that which is patriotic is a vital difference.