"Watching the news inspires me to keep going and reminds me why I should never complain. I'm inspired by those who don't let others define them: Martin Luther King Jr., James Dean, Vincent Van Gogh, Hillary Clinton, Tennessee Williams, director Steve McQueen. They've all changed the conversation by making their voices heard."

“It's funny to be discovered by a lot of people who didn't know you before. People always used to say, 'Do you shop at Home Depot?' or 'Does your kid go to such and such school?' They want to know why they know me, even if they don't know my name. I don't think that's a bad thing, by the way; I think it's nice to be kind of anonymously famous.”

“If you double the number of experiments you do per year you're going to double your inventiveness.”

“Experience means conflict, our natures being what they are, and conflict means drama.”

Source : Allen Tate (1999). “Essays of Four Decades”, Isi Books

“Ubiquity is the new exclusivity.”

Source : "Advertising itself is not evil, but it has certainly got out of control" by Jon Alexander, www.theguardian.com. November 25, 2011.

“The sympathies of a well-adjusted person can easily be aroused by the plight of strangers. Indeed, the skillful writer of a novel, a play, or an opera can engage our emotions on behalf of people who are not only strangers to us, but who do not even exist! And a person whose emotions cannot be so aroused is not behaving normally.”

“None of us can change our yesterdays but all of us can change our tomorrows.”

“The short story is the literature of the nomad.”

“Violence is not merely killing another. It is violence when we use a sharp word, when we make a gesture to brush away a person, when we obey because there is fear. So violence isn't merely organized butchery in the name of God, in the name of society or country. Violence is much more subtle, much deeper, and we are inquiring into the very depths of violence.”