“What sense is there in continuing when one has seen the future?”

Thoughts are no more than electrical surges in the brain.

I’ve taken a philosophical position on e-mail. Although I think it’s a wonderful communication technology, and it has a lot of good uses, it is abused quite a lot.

I was in New York and had lunch with Oliver Sachs and compared notes with him – he is someone I really like.

I reached for some principle that had been subconscious in me and lifted it into consciousness.

Writers are a loosely knit community – community is an overstated word. Writers don’t see each other very much.

I think Joe Leiberman has been one of the leaders of the country… people have such a broad respect for him as a moral force.

Music is, of course, a universal emotional experience, cutting across cultures and languages. I studied piano for ten years as a child and consider that experience one of the most valuable in my life.

Time is the clarity for seeing right and wrong.

All beliefs not in such contradiction may be considered as faith. Whether faith in a particular belief is beneficial or not is another matter.

At every point of decision, the world splits into three worlds, each with the same people, but different fates for those people. In time, there are an infinity of worlds.

We try to connect. We try to find truth. We dream and we hope. And underneath all of these strivings, we are haunted by the suspicion that what we see and understand of the world is only a tiny piece of the whole.

The world is moving faster and faster, but where are we going?

The future is pattern, organization, union, intensification; the past, randomness, confusion, disintegration, dissipation.

Every essay – the subject matter of every essay – is ultimately about the essayist; him or herself. That ultimately, every essayist is writing about his or her view of the world.

Sons never escape from the shadows of their fathers. Nor do daughters of their mothers. No one ever comes into his own…Such is the cost of immortality. No person is whole. No person is free.

Franz Kafka is an idea person. His books begin and end in ideas. Ideas have always been important to me in my writing.

The dead don’t die. They look on and help.

And now I see with eye serene, The very pulse of the machine. A being breathing thoughtful breaths, A traveler between life and death.

See no one loves you more than me and no one ever will.

My sense of humor will always stand in the way of my seeing myself, my family, my race or my nation as the whole intent of the universe.

A fool sees not the same tree that a wise man sees.

Our elders said back then that if Black folks really wanted to see Change, they had to step up to the plate and do it themselves. Somebody has to be First. Will that be you?

Whenever you see a successful business, someone once made a courageous decision.

There’s no vocabulary For love within a family, love that’s lived in But not looked at, love within the light of which All else is seen, the love within which All other love finds speech. This love is silent.