Writer Quotes

No one is born hating others.

It is natural for us, as human beings, to look forward. Our eyes naturally look ahead. In this sense, we are made for moving toward a goal.

Human rights will be a powerful force for the transformation of reality when they are not simply understood as externally defined norms of behavior but are lived as the spontaneous manifestation of internalized values.

It is only through such real-life daily struggles and challenges that a genuine sensitivity to human rights can be inculcated. This is a truth that is not limited to school education: it applies to all of us.

The determination to win is the better part of winning.

Ultimately, all human activities have as their goal the realization of happiness. Why, then, have we ended up producing the opposite result? Could the underlying cause be our failure to correctly understand the true nature of happiness?

Dialogue and education for peace can help free our hearts from the impulse toward intolerance and the rejection of others.

A person, who no matter how desperate the situation, gives others hope, is a true leader.

Women are, in my view, natural peacemakers. As givers and nurturers of life, through their focus on human relationships and their engagement with the demanding work of raising children and protecting family life, they develop a deep sense of empathy that cuts through to underlying human realities.

With love and patience, nothing is impossible.

You must not for one instant give up the effort to build new lives for yourselves. Creativity means to push open the heavy, groaning doorway to life.

A great revolution in just one single individual will help achieve a change in the destiny of a society and, further, will enable a change in the destiny of humankind.

Genuine happiness can only be achieved when we transform our way of life from the unthinking pursuit of pleasure to one committed to enriching our inner lives, when we focus on 'being more' rather than simply having more.

Do not commit the error, common among the young, of assuming that if you cannot save the whole of mankind you have failed.

We are here to add to the sum of human goodness. To prove the thing exists.

There is an eternal landscape, a geography of the soul; we search for its outlines all our lives.

Michigan is two radically different places - the North and the South which makes for good drama and contrast.

I've never felt influenced by Ernest Hemingway though I suppose there is something inevitable there.

I write novellas because I don't like loose sprawling prose.

I used to get criticized for putting food in novels.

I thought, frankly, that it would be more pleasant to write a memoir than it was.

I should add that I very much enjoy certain cities especially Paris, New York and Chicago.

I see more genuine sociability between the races in Mississippi than I see in Michigan. No question.

I rarely read or buy a book because of a review.

I got $30 from Nation magazine for a poem and $500 for my first book of poems.

I don't know what psychotherapy does. I have been seeing the same person for 26 years now.

I do have trouble with titles.

I couldn't run a tight schedule, and if you're any good at teaching, you get sucked dry because you like your students and you're trying to help them, but you don't have any time left to write yourself.

I can write anywhere.

I asked a French critic a couple of years ago why my books did so well in France. He said it was because in my novels people both act and think. I got a kick out of that.