“I think that the best thing we can do for our children is to allow them to do things for themselves, allow them to be strong, allow them to experience life on their own terms, allow them to take the subway… let them be better people, let them believe more in themselves.”

“Tomorrow may be hell, but today was a good writing day, and on the good writing days nothing else matters.”

“When the power of love overcomes the love of power, the world will know peace.”

“If it isn’t too late for me, it isn’t too late for yourself.”

“Sleep, those little slices of death — how I loathe them.”

“Writing is a manual labor of the mind: a job, like laying pipe.”

“When the soul is consciously awakened can it comprehend the acquiescence of Muhammad, the unshakable foundation of Abraham and the very nature of Christ, equating the Aleph in the sealed Universe — As The Soul Speaks”

“God’s Will is what we would choose if we knew what God knows.”

“Lady, I do not make up things. That is lies. Lies are not true. But the truth could be made up if yo know how. And that’s the truth.”

“We believe in ordinary acts of bravery, in the courage that drives one person to stand up for another.”

“Imani ni nia ya kujua kisichoweza kujulikana na hupeleka watu kwenye ukweli. Kuamini hupotosha, na ni nia ya kudharau kinachoweza kujulikana.”

“Novels for me are how I find out what’s going on in my own head. And so that’s a really useful and indeed critical thing to do when you do as many of these other things as I do.”

“Love comforteth like sunshine after rain.”

“I wish I could tell you it doesn’t matter. I wish I could hold you close and tell that you will be loved for what you do, that you are incredible and unique. I wish you knew how much you were needed, how much I miss you. I wish. You dream of desires and hopes, and that is why I dream of you – because you are my desire and hope.”

“That can happen when people die, the argument with them drops away and people so flawed while they were drawing breath that at times they were all but unbearable now assert themselves in the most appealing way, and what was least to your liking the day before yesterday becomes in the limousine behind the hearse a cause not only for sympathetic amusement but for admiration”