My mind boggles at the amount of violence inflicted upon children in today's society.

Who has suffered? The families of the dead no doubt. But a greater loss was inflicted on Pakistan because as I said we lost the pillars of our society.

Poetry heals the wounds inflicted by reason.

The threat today is not that of the 1930s. It's not big powers going to war with each other. The ravages which fundamentalist political ideology inflicted on the 20th century are memories. The Cold war is over. Europe is at peace if not always diplomatically.

Suffering by nature or chance never seems so painful as suffering inflicted on us by the arbitrary will of another.

The sad truth is that the civil rights movement cannot be reborn until we identify the causes of black suffering some of them self-inflicted. Why can't black leaders organize rallies around responsible sexuality birth within marriage parents reading to their children and students staying in school and doing homework?

No oppression is so heavy or lasting as that which is inflicted by the perversion and exorbitance of legal authority.

Forgiveness is not always easy. At times it feels more painful than the wound we suffered to forgive the one that inflicted it. And yet there is no peace without forgiveness.

I always say three things make a writer: inspiration obviously perspiration doing the work. But the third is desperation. I'm not really fit for anything else or to have a real job. That fear drives me. The pressure has always been self inflicted.

When we're dealing with the people in our family - no matter how annoying or gross they may be no matter how self-inflicted their suffering may appear no matter how afflicted they are with ignorance prejudice or nose hairs - we give from the deepest parts of ourselves.

Washington's answer to a self-inflicted financial crisis reminded Americans why they so deeply distrust the political class. The 'fiscal cliff' process was secretive and sloppy and the nation's so-called leadership lacked the political courage to address our root problems: joblessness and debt.