Democracy is not something you put away for ten years, and then in the 11th year you wake up and start practicing again. We have to begin to learn to rule ourselves again.

The damage done in one year can sometimes take ten or twenty years to repair.

Literature, whether handed down by word or mouth or in print, gives us a second handle on reality.

When the moon is shining the cripple becomes hungry for a walk

It is the story that owns and directs us. It is the thing that makes us different from cattle; it is the mark on the face that sets one people apart from their neighbors.

People from different parts of the world can respond to the same story if it says something to them about their own history and their own experience.

In the vocabulary of certain radical theorists contradictions are given the status of some deadly disease to which their opponents alone can succumb. But contradictions are the very stuff of life. If there had been a little dash of contradiction among the Gadarene swine some of them might have been saved from drowning.