"We must be unafraid to be utterly honest, to honor our gut feelings, and to say and do the unpopular when necessary. We have to give up our addiction to other people's opinions and surrender to the freedom of acting with strength and courage."

“A writer judging his own work is like deceived husband - he is frequently the last person to appreciate the true state of affairs.”

“The rich are too indolent, the poor too weak, to bear the insupportable fatigue of thinking.”

“Feeling gratitude and not expressing it is like wrapping a present and not giving it.”

“The greatest discoveries will be along spiritual lines. This is the field where miracles are going to happen. Spiritual power is the greatest underdeveloped power and has the greatest future.”

“Look, man, we'd probably most of us agree that these are dark times, and stupid ones, but do we need fiction that does nothing but dramatize how dark and stupid everything is?”

Source : Review of Contemporary Fiction, 1993.

“I suppose that it was inevitable that my word-base broadened. I could now for the first time pick up a book and read and now begin to understand what the book was saying. Anyone who has read a great deal can imagine the new world that opened. Let me tell you something: from then until I left that prison, in every free moment I had, if I was not reading in the library, I was reading in my bunk. You couldn’t have gotten me out of my books with a wedge...Months passed without my even thinking about being imprisoned. In fact, up to then, I never had been so truly free in my life.”

“My life, in some ways, has been a half-measure. I didn't commit myself all the way to my marriage and family, because I would have given up more. And I didn't go all the way with just being completely selfish. I always wonder where my career would be if I was more selfish.”

Source : "Why Me?" by Ian Parker, www.newyorker.com. September 8, 2008.

“I'm not intimidated by anyone. Everyone is made with two arms, two legs, a stomach and a head. Just think about that.”