[Liberty] is a choreand a long-distance race, quite solitary, quite exhausting.

A work of art is a confession.

No one who lives in the sunlight of gratitude that things aren't worse makes a failure of his or her life.

One might think, that a period which, within fifty years, uproots, enslaves or kills seventy million human beings, should only, and forthwith, be condemned. But also its guilt must be understood.

You cannot create experience. You must undergo it.

When I was young I asked more of people than they could give: everlasting friendship, endless feeling. Now I know to ask less of them than they can give: a straightforward companionship. And their feelings, their friendship, their generous actions seem in my eyes to be wholly miraculous: a consequence of grace alone.

Whatever prevents you from doing your work has become your work.