A writer has to take all the risks of putting down what he sees. No one can tell him about that. No one can control that reality. It reminds me of something Pablo Picasso was supposed to have said to Gertrude Stein while he was painting her portrait. Gertrude said, “I don’t look like that.” And Picasso replied, “You will.” And he was right.

I conceive of God, in fact, as a means of liberation and not a means to control others.

There is a fearful splendor in absolute desolation.

One day, to everyone’s astonishment, someone drops a match in the powder keg and everything blows up.

We cannot discuss the state of our minorities until we first have a sense of what we are, who we are, what our goals are, and what we take life to be.

There are few things under heaven more unnerving than the silent, accumulating contempt and hatred of a people.

The making of an American begins at the point where he himself rejects all other ties, any other history, and himself adopts the vesture of his adopted land.