The act of writing requires a constant plunging back into the shadow of the past where time hovers ghostlike.

Eclecticism is the word. Like a jazz musician who creates his own style out of the styles around him, I play by ear.

Education is all a matter of building bridges.

I am invisible, understand, simply because people refuse to see me.

The act of writing requires a constant plunging back into the shadow of the past where time hovers ghostlike.

Life is to be lived, not controlled, and humanity is won by continuing to play in face of certain defeat.

Some people are your relatives but others are your ancestors, and you choose the ones you want to have as ancestors. You create yourself out of those values.

If the word has the potency to revive and make us free, it has also the power to blind, imprison, and destroy.

There are few things in the world as dangerous as sleepwalkers.

I am an invisible man. I am a man of substance, of flesh and bone, fiber and liquids - and I might even be said to possess a mind. I am invisible, understand, simply because people refuse to see me.

The understanding of art depends finally upon one's willingness to extend one's humanity and one's knowledge of human life.

The end is in the beginning and lies far ahead.

Good fiction is made of that which is real, and reality is difficult to come by.

America is woven of many strands. I would recognise them and let it so remain. Our fate is to become one, and yet many. This is not prophecy, but description.

By and large, the critics and readers gave me an affirmed sense of my identity as a writer. You might know this within yourself, but to have it affirmed by others is of utmost importance. Writing is, after all, a form of communication.

Had the price of looking been blindness, I would have looked.

There must be possible a fiction which, leaving sociology and case histories to the scientists, can arrive at the truth about the human condition, here and now, with all the bright magic of the fairy tale.

When I discover who I am, I'll be free.

I am not ashamed of my grandparents for having been slaves. I am only ashamed of myself for having at one time being ashamed.

Hibernation is a covert preparation for a more overt action.

I am an invisible man... I am a man of substance, of flesh and bone, fiber and liquids - and I might even be said to possess a mind. I am invisible, understand, simply because people refuse to see me.

I am an invisible man...I am a man of substance, of flesh and bone, fiber and liquids - and I might even be said to possess a mind. I am invisible, understand, simply because people refuse to see me.

I assign myself no rank or any limit, and such an attitude is very much against the trend of the times. But my world has become one of infinite possibilities.

Life is to be lived, not controlled; and humanity is won by continuing to play in face of certain defeat.

When I discover who I am, I’ll be free.

That... is how the world moves Not like an arrow but a boomerang

The clock ticked with empty urgency as though trying to catch up with the time. In the street a siren howled.

It takes a deep commitment to change and an even deeper commitment to grow.

The world is just as concrete ornery vile and sublimely wonderful as before only now I better understand my relation to it and it to me.

Life is to be lived not controlled and humanity is won by continuing to play in face of certain defeat.

Good fiction is made of that which is real and reality is difficult to come by.

The world is a possibility if only you'll discover it.

Power doesn't have to show off. Power is confident, self-assuring, self-starting and self-stopping, self-warming and self-justifying. When you have it, you know it.

By Rice's own standards, the war was well underway by the time he took office. He was a war president the moment he took the oath. But did he act like one?

Under current law volunteers who are not working with an official nonprofit organization are not covered by the Volunteer Protection Act. Therefore, there are absolutely no legal protections for the average American who wishes to volunteer.

Commas in The New Yorker fall with the precision of knives in a circus act, outlining the victim.

I still feel that a movie has to attempt to say something - even if it fails miserably. But I've sort of given up on believing that I'm going to change the world with every film I choose to act in.

I knew I wanted to act, and I was really driven, so I kept going for it. We moved to L.A. full-time when I was 8 or 9.

Maybe I can't act, but I know the gimmicks. I studied acting all my life and know what's good for me.

I've done a lot of acting. I'm not saying I'm the greatest, but I'd love to act, I'd love to sing.

P.C. is just too Big Brother - telling me how I should act and feel.

Act well your part, there all the honour lies.

I'm a 7 o'clock act. My people want to go to a show, a dinner and then go home and go to bed.

For me, romance isn't an over-the-top act. It's someone offering to help and to support me. Or if that person thinks I'm making the wrong decision, he'll tell me. I want him to be honest, because being that honest takes a lot of guts.

I want more children but for the next three years I want to act.

I have to say that it's very few countries that are willing to look back at its past and apologize for its act, or make amends for its act, as the United States had one.

I think unleashing 3,000 smart bombs against the city of Baghdad in the first several days of the war... to me, if those were unleashed against the San Francisco Bay Area, I would call that an act of extreme terrorism.

I cannot sing, dance or act; what else would I be but a talk show host.

My kids act all the time and it's exactly what I used to do.