Oppressive language does more than represent violence; it is violence; does more than represent the limits of knowledge; it limits knowledge.

We're all surrounded by what I call faux language, fake language of commerce, of news media.

Everything depends on knowing how much,” she said, and “Good is knowing when to stop.

I don't believe any real artists have ever been non-political. They may have been insensitive to this particular plight or insensitive to that, but they were political, because that's what an artist is-a politician.

I lived in a little working-class town that had no black neighborhoods at all - one high school. We all played together. Everybody was either somebody from the South or an immigrant from East Europe or from Mexico. And there was one church, and there were four elementary schools. And we were all, pretty much until the end of the war, very, very poor.

Life that crawled, life that slunk and crept and never closed its eyes. Life that burrowed and scurried, and life so still it was indistinguishable from the ivy stems on which it lay. Birth, life, and death - each took place on the hidden side of a leaf.

Love just seems to make life not just livable, but a gallant, gallant event.