Perhaps I am still very much of an American. That is to say, naïve, optimistic, gullible. In the eyes of a European, what am I but an American to the core, an American who exposes his Americanism like a sore. Like it or not, I am a product of this land of plenty, a believer in superabundance, a believer in miracles.

I used to think a bird couldn't fly if its wings got wet.

I had learned to harness ignorance with presumption. I was ready to become an unacknowledged watercolorist.

The moment one is on the side of life; peace and security drop out of consciousness. The only peace, the only security, is in fulfillment.

One can be absolutely truthful and sincere even though admittedly the most outrageous liar. Fiction and invention are of the very fabric of life.

We live at the edge of the miraculous.

Until he [man] has become fully human, until he learns to conduct himself as a member of the earth, he will continue to create gods who will destroy him. The tragedy of Greece lies not in the destruction of a great culture but in the abortion of a great vision.