Writers . . . write to give reality to experience.

The American journey has not ended. America is always still to build ... West is a country in the mind, and so eternal.

Democracy is never a thing done. Democracy is always something that a nation must be doing.

America is promises to take! America is promises to us to take them.

The dissenter is every human being at those moments of his life when he resigns momentarily from the herd and thinks for himself.

What you really have to know is one: yourself. And the only way you can know that one is in the mirror of the others. And the only way you can see into the mirror of the others is by love or its opposite—by profound emotion. Certainly not by curiosity—by dancing around asking, looking, making notes. You have to live relationships to know.

It is not in the world of ideas that life is lived. Life is lived for better or worse in life, and to a man in life, his life can be no more absurd than it can be the opposite of absurd, whatever that opposite may be.