I would be twenty before I learned how to be fifteen, thirty before I knew what it meant to be twenty, and now at seventy-two I have to stop myself from thinking like a man of fifty who has plenty of time ahead.

The wedding of Christianity or Judaism with nationalism is lethal.

The witch-hunt was a perverse manifestation of the panic which set in among all classes when the balance began to turn toward greater individual freedom. The witch-hunt was not, however, a mere repression. It was also, and as importantly, a long overdue opportunity for everyone so inclined to express publicly his guilt and sins, under the cover of accusations against the victims.

Life, woman, life is God's most precious gift; no principle, however glorious, may justify the taking of it.

The American Dream is the largely unacknowledged screen in front of which all American writing plays itself out.

The camera has its own kind of consciousness; in the lens the Garden of Eden itself would become ever so slightly too perfect.

After all the highways, and the trains, and the appointments, and the years, you end up worth more dead than alive.