“Most of the people in the audience were white and old. They had the gaunt look of people who have seen all the important movies and can now only look forward to reruns.”

“What if I've died a long time ago and come here? he wondered. What if the defining characteristic of hell is that you're locked in an endless, blind battle to reform it?”

“The roots of shame run deep.”

“Every child is a packet of disappointments, hurts, dangers.”

“To ask a child to feel sympathy for the poor is harder than getting him to feel sympathy for a chicken or a goatat least you can see a goat being slaughtered.”

“Like men who have failed together, they wanted nothing more than to never see each other again.”

“We do not need guns and bombs to bring peace, we need love and compassion.”

“No More Games. No More Bombs. No More Walking. No More Fun. No More Swimming. 67. That is 17 years past 50. 17 more than I needed or wanted. Boring. I am always bitchy. No Fun for anybody. 67. You...”

“I used to think it was possible for an artist to alter the inner life of the culture. Now bomb-makers and gunmen have taken that territory.”

“I shiver, thinking how easy it is to be totally wrong about people-to see one tiny part of them and confuse it for the whole, to see the cause and think it's the effect or vice versa”

“At sunrise everything is luminous but not clear.”

“I think it's impossible to really understand somebody, what they want, what they believe, and not love them the way they love themselves.”

“There are more places you haven't heard of then you're heard of!' I loved that”

“I follow a dairy-free and gluten-free diet, which can be challenging in some places.”

“I'm pretty much all for poetry in public places - poetry on buses, poetry on subways, on billboards, on cereal boxes.”