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

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.

I just grew up loving acting and loving entertainment.

An accent in a way can be an entry into a character.

Sometimes the best, and only effective, way to kill an idea is to put it into practice.

I've probably got lots of heroes. One is a chap called Charles Campbell - he is a wonderful chap. We cooked together in a nightclub in Notting Hill. He told me brilliant stories of food and life and generally put me on the right track.

Empathy is not as complicated when you have some aspects in common with your character; it's not impossible to know someone who's like you in many ways but different in one. This is true especially if you are a reader. Reading makes you accustomed to inhabiting other lives and sensibilities.

It is important that you appreciate that the workplace must be a place of empowerment, but the empowerment must not only be connected to the job that you do.

I loved painting and drawing for many reasons. One of them was that all it really required was me, a pencil and a pad. It was something I was passionate about, and still am.

In my own writing, I think of myself as a realist who exaggerates a little.

Culture relates to objects and is a phenomenon of the world; entertainment relates to people and is a phenomenon of life.

A man's house is his castle.

I'm very lucky. I am one of those people who is able to go home, shut the front door and completely focus on the kids.

Obviously, if I could go back and change anything, I would be a perfect man. And I know there's no perfect man.

That's the cool thing, when I get to work with people I love. The biggest has probably been Kris Kristofferson on 'Bloodworth.'

Mathematics is the language with which God wrote the universe.

I have a very simple philosophy. One has to separate the abilities from the disabilities. The fact I cannot walk, that I need crutches or a scooter or whatever it is, has nothing to do with my playing the violin.

When she stopped conforming to the conventional picture of femininity she finally began to enjoy being a woman.