Sucking up to the biggies won't get us anywhere.

Sexuality is one of the ways that we become enlightened, actually, because it leads us to self-knowledge.

Never be the only one, except, possibly, in your own home.

My life is not to be somebody else's impact - you know what I mean?

Language is an intrinsic part of who we are and what has, for good or evil, happened to us.

Israel is guilty of apartheid and persecution of the Palestinian people, both inside Israel and also in the Occupied Territories.

I'm the most stubborn person I know.

I'm entirely interested in people, and also other creatures and beings, but especially in people, and I tend to read them by emotional field more than anything. So I have a...

I think there is a sense of being forced at this time to look at America's really large shadow and that's not all that bad.

I see children, all children, as humanity's most precious resource, because it will be to them that the care of the planet will always be left.

I realized I was a country person - I'm just not used to small spaces.

I started out as a poet. I've always been a poet since I was 7 or 8. And so I feel myself to be fundamentally a poet who got into writing novels.

I was distressed that after 9/11, when the United States was attacked by terrorists, the United States' response was to attack Afghanistan, where some of the terrorists had been.

I'm not convinced that women have the education or the sense of their own history enough or that they understand the cruelty of which men are capable and the delight that many...

It is justice and respect that I want the world to dust off and put - without delay, and with tenderness - back on the head of the Palestinian child. It will be imperfect justice...

My work is about my life, and what I want to do with it.

Part of what confuses people in times of upheaval is that you're getting so many different points of view and directions and so and so, how to do this and do that. And a lot of...

People tend to think that life really does progress for everyone eventually, that people progress, but actually only some people progress. The rest of the people don't.

My mother was very strong. Once, she picked up a coconut and smashed it against my father's head. It taught me about women defending themselves and not collapsing in a heap.

It's an awful feeling to write something that you feel is really important... and to feel that you're being published by people who really don't get it and/or don't really care.