As for myself: I had come to the conclusion that there was nothing sacred about myself or any human being, that we were all machines, doomed to collide and collide and collide. For want of anything better to do, we became fans of collisions. Sometimes I wrote well about collisions, which meant I was a writing machine in good repair. Sometimes I wrote badly, which meant I was a writing machine in bad repair. I no more harbored sacredness than did a Pontiac, a mousetrap, or a South Bend Lathe.

What good is the warmth of summer, without the cold of winter to give it sweetness.

So long as you are ready to die for humanity, the life of your country is immortal.

The palace is not safe when the cottage is not happy.

When our founding fathers drafted the Constitution and Bill of Rights, black people weren't even considered human.

History is how we have learnt to think about ourselves. It's not as though the Greeks and Romans are static entities out there to be discovered and translated. We make them speak, we talk to them, and they inform what we say.