A man in a desert can hold absence in his cupped hands, knowing it is something that feeds him more than water.

I suppose it is submerged realities that give to dreams their curious air of hyper-reality. But perhaps there is something else as well, something nebulous, gauze-like, through which everything one sees in a dream seems, paradoxically, much clearer. A pond becomes a lake, a breeze becomes a storm, a handful of dust is a desert, a grain of sulphur in the blood is a volcanic inferno. What manner of theater is it, in which we are at once playwright, actor, stage manager, scene painter and audience?

Totalitarianism is not about some state that appears out of nowhere and suddenly is all-powerful. There can't be any such thing. Totalitarianism starts when the difference between your public life and your private life is effaced.

I, place economy among the first & most important republican virtues, & public debt as the greatest of the dangers to be feared

The words that come out of our mouths do not vanish but are perpetually stored in infinite space, and they will come back to us in due time.

The life of the enemy . Whoever lives for the sake of combating an enemy has an interest in the enemy's staying alive.