Make a difference about something other than yourselves.

But to find out the truth about how dreams die, one should never take the word of the dreamer.

Word-work is sublime... because it is generative; it makes meaning that secures our difference, our human difference-the way in which we are like no other life. We die. That may be the meaning of life. But we do language. That may be the measure of our lives.

The presence of evil was something to be first recognized, then dealt with, survived, outwitted, triumphed over.

I laughed but before I could agree with the hairdressers that she was crazy, she said, 'What's the world for if you can't make it up the way you want it?' " 'The way I want it?' " 'Yeah. The way you want it. Don't you want it to be something more than what it is?' " 'What'st eh point? I can't change it.' " 'That's the point. If you don't, it will change you and it'll be your fault cause you let it. I let it. And messed up my life.' " 'Mess it up how?' " 'Forgot it.' " 'Forgot?' " 'Forgot it was mine. My life. I just ran up and down the streets wishing I was somebody else.

The peace I am thinking of is the dance of an open mind when it engages another equally open one.

Most of the really good literature I've read in my life was political, meaning it was important - about something going on in the history of the world - or contemporary.