When a tradition gathers enough strength to go on for centuries, you don't just turn it off one day.

Presidents do not go off on leave without telling the country.

The whole idea of a stereotype is to simplify. Instead of going through the problem of all this great diversity - that it's this or maybe that - you have just one large statement; it is this.

It always surprised him when he thought of it later that he did not sink under the load of despair.

I'm a practised writer now. But when I began, I had no idea what this was going to be. I just knew that there was something inside me that wanted me to tell who I was, and that would have come out even if I didn't want it.

When old people speak it is not because of the sweetness of words in our mouths; it is because we see something which you do not see.