“Whenever there are great virtues, it’s a sure sign something’s wrong.”

When crimes begin to pile up they become invisible. When sufferings become unendurable the cries are no longer heard. The cries, too, fall like rain in summer.

Intelligence is not to make no mistakes, but quickly to see how to make them good.

Firebugs dragging their gasoline bottles are approaching the Academy of Arts, with a grin. And so, instead of embracing them, let us demand the freedom of the elbow to knock the bottles out of their filthy hands.

If you join the rat race — you’re in the race of rats.

We attacked a foreign people and treated them like rebels. As you know, it’s all right to treat barbarians barbarically. It’s the desire to be barbaric that makes governments call their enemies barbarians.

Who struggles can fail. Who doesn’t struggle has already failed!

Even the most blockheaded bureaucrat, provided he loves peace, is a greater lover of the arts than any so-called art-lover who loves the arts of war.

Temptation to behave is terrible.

Here today we huddle tight As the darkest heathens might The snow falls chilly on our skin The snow is forcing its way in. Hush, snow, come in with us to dwell: We were thrown out by Heaven as well.

It is not enough to demand insight and informative images of reality from the theater. Our theater must stimulate a desire for understanding, a delight in changing reality.

Poverty makes you wise but it’s a curse.

What’s breaking into a bank compared with founding a bank?

The mobilization order is already written out. Every day, to earn my daily bread I go to the market where lies are bought Hopefully I take up my place among the sellers.

You may proclaim, good sirs, your fine philosophy But till you feed us, right and wrong can wait!

If you wan to steal money, don’t rob a bank – open one.

Impact lies in the vicinity of mistakes.

Time is clay. Go make something.

My mom always taught me – you know, little boys listen to their moms too much – that whatever you put into something is what you’re going to get out of it.

I didn’t tell my kids, ‘You have to play viola, and you have to play piano.’ They chose these things on their own, and I don’t think we have to give kids every choice, but we do have to give them some choice because that autonomy is crucial for fostering passion.

I really feel the novel has certain conveniences about it and has something so fundamental about it you could almost say that as long as there is paper, there is going to be the novel.

I’m widest awake as a writer doing something new, engaged in a process I’m not sure I can finish, generating at the edge of my powers. Some people bungee jump; I write.

I think art since Cezanne has become extremely romantic and unrealistic, feeding on art. It is Utopian. It has less and less to do with the world. It looks inward – neo-Zen and all that. Pop Art looks out into the world. It doesn’t look like a painting of something, it looks like the thing itself.

It is painful to be told that anything is very fine and not be able to feel that it is fine–something like being blind, while people talk of the sky.

Never give up, have the passion. Don’t be afraid.