Does a man become a revolutionary out of the belief he's entitled to joy rather than submission?

The artist deals with what cannot be said in words. The novelist says in words what cannot be said in words.

Wars and elections are both too big and too small to matter in the long run. The daily work - that goes on, it adds up.

Once you start cooking, one thing leads to another. A new recipe is as exciting as a blind date. A new ingredient, heaven help me, is an intoxicating affair.

When you pick up a novel from the bed side table, you put down your own life at the same time and you become another person for the duration.

...our best task is to move forward without insisting others slide backward.

The arc of history is longer than human vision. It bends. We abolished slavery, we granted universal suffrage. We have done hard things before. And every time it took a terrible fight between people who could not imagine changing the rules, and those who said, 'We already did. We have made the world new.' The hardest part will be to convince yourself of the possibilities, and hang on.