European society has always been divided into classes in a way that American society never has been. A European writer considers himself to be part o….

We are responsible for the world in which we find ourselves, if only because we are the only sentient force which can change it..

You go into a book and you're in the dark, really. You go in with a certain fear and trembling. You know one thing. You know you will not be the same….

To be sensual, I think, is to respect and rejoice in the force of life, of life itself, and to be present in all that one does, from the effort of lo….

... every human being is an unprecedented miracle..

I am certainly convinced that it is one of the greatest impulses of mankind to arrive at something higher than a natural state..

Voyagers discover that the world can never be larger than the person that is in the world; but it is impossible to foresee this, it is impossible to ….

One can only face in others what one can face in oneself..

It happened, as many things do, imperceptibly, in many ways at once. I date it - the slow crumbling of my faith, the pulverization of my fortress - f….

Any honest examination of the national life proves how far we are from the standard of human freedom with which we began. The recovery of this standa….

The making of an American begins at the point where he himself rejects all other ties, any other history, and himself adopts the vesture of his adopt….

A writer has to take all the risks of putting down what he sees..

What passes for identity in America is a series of myths about one's heroic ancestors. It's astounding to me, for example, that so many people really….

Money, it turned out, was exactly like sex, you thought of nothing else if you didn't have it and thought of other things if you did..

Nobody is more dangerous than he who imagines himself pure in heart; for his purity, by definition, is unassailable..

People who remember court madness through pain, the pain of the perpetually recurring death of their innocence; people who forget court another kind ….

We all commit our crimes. The thing is to not lie about them -- to try to understand what you have done, why you have done it. That way, you can begi….

The world's definitions are one thing and the life one actually lives is quite another. One cannot allow oneself, nor one's family, friends, or lover….

Pessimists are the people who have no hope for themselves or for others. Pessimists are also people who think the human race is beneath their notice,….

We cannot discuss the state of our minorities until we first have some sense of what we are, who we are, what our goals are, and what we take life to….

To act is to be committed, and to be committed is to be in danger..