I tell my students, 'When you get these jobs that you have been so brilliantly trained for, just remember that your real job is that if you are free, you need to free somebody else. If you have some power, then your job is to empower somebody else. This is not just a grab-bag candy game.

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I am a writer and my faith in the world of art is intense, but not irrational, nor naïve - because art takes us and makes us take a journey beyond price, beyond cost, into bearing witness to the world as it is and as it should be. Art invites us to know beauty and to solicit it, summon it, from even the most tragic of circumstances.

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All important things are hard.

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In times of dread, artists must never choose to remain silent.

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There is no time for despair, no place for self-pity, no need for silence, no room for fear. We speak, we write, we do language. That is how civilizations heal.

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I want to discourage you from choosing anything or making any decision simply because it is safe. Things of value seldom are.

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Laughter is more serious than tears.

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The function of freedom is to free someone else.

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Definitions belong to the definers, not the defined.

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Books ARE a form of political action. Books are knowledge. Books are reflection. Books change your mind.

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