Author Quotes

The injunction that we should love our neighbors as ourselves means to us equally that we should love ourselves as we love our neighbors.

The free man must be born before freedom can be won, and the brotherly man must be born before full brotherhood can be won. It will come into being only if we build it out of our very muscle and bone - by trying to act it out.

Punishment cannot heal spirits, can only break them.

Our task, of course, is to transmute the anger that is affliction into the anger that is determination to bring about change. I think, in fact, that one could give that as a definition of revolution.

Of course it can be said of jails, too, that they try - by punishing the troublesome - to deter others. No doubt, in certain instances this deterrence actually works. But generally speaking it fails conspicuously.

Nonviolent tactics can move into action on our behalf men not naturally inclined to act for us.

Nonviolent action does not have to get others to be nice. It can in effect force them to consult their consciences.

I think the only choice that will enable us to hold to our vision... is one that abandons the concept of naming enemies and adopts a concept familiar to the nonviolent tradition: naming behavior that is oppressive.

All prisons that have existed in our society to date put people away as no human being should ever be put away.

After the revolution, let us hope, prisons simply would not exist - if by prisons we mean places that could be experienced by the men and women in them at all as every place that goes by that name now is bound to be experienced.

After the revolution, it might very well remain necessary to place people where they could not do harm to others. But the one under restraint should be cut off from the rest of society as little as possible.

People who attack others need rationalizations for doing so. We undermine those rationalizations.

The longer we listen to one another - with real attention - the more commonality we will find in all our lives. That is, if we are careful to exchange with one another life stories and not simply opinions.

Vengeance is not the point; change is. But the trouble is that in most people's minds the thought of victory and the thought of punishing the enemy coincide.

When asked by an anthropologist what the Indians called America before the white man came, an Indian said simply, 'Ours.'

Western civilization, unfortunately, does not link knowledge and morality but rather, it connects knowledge and power and makes them equivalent.

You have to go out of your way as a suspense novelist to find situations where the protagonists are somewhat helpless and in real danger.

Writing doesn't leave much time for hobbies, unless you consider that I began writing as a hobby and have made the hobby into a profession.

We're all pilgrims on the same journey - but some pilgrims have better road maps.

There is no terra incognito left.

There are Mafia families that have bought magnificent houses on the North Shore, although not yet the great estates because they don't want that kind of high profile.

There are a lot of books about the passing of the English aristocracy, but the vast majority of Long Islanders don't understand their own backyard. It's a private preserve.

The world has gotten smaller and more accessible since I first started writing in the 70's.

Stephen King once told me he liked my writing. And that was great.

Somehow our devils are never quite what we expect when we meet them face to face.

It's good to stay as close to real life as you can, and then kind of dress it up.

I've always been fascinated by the Gold Coast. The homes themselves are spectacular, unlike anything you'll see other than in Newport, Bar Harbor or Palm Beach. It's a very special area that, because of local demographics, is not going to survive much longer.

I used the pen name because I knew I wanted to write better novels under my own name someday.

I thought to myself, what is everyone's worst fear? Nuclear terrorism in America.

I read 'Time', 'Newsweek' and 'The Economist'.