It is astonishing the lengths to which a person, or a people, will go in order to avoid a truthful mirror.

We can make America what America must become.

There is something terribly radical about believing that one's own experience and images are important enough to speak about, much less to write about and to perform

Perhaps the whole root of our trouble, the human trouble, is that we will sacrifice all the beauty of our lives, will imprison ourselves in totems, taboos, crosses, blood sacrifices, steeples, mosques, races, armies, flags, nations, in order to deny the fact of death, the only fact we have. It seems to me that one ought to rejoice in the fact of death - ought to decide, indeed, to earn one's death by confronting with passion the conundrum of life.

You think your pains and heartbreaks are unprecedented in the history of the world, but then you read. [and then you discover that others have suffered much more than you and your problems look good in comparison]

Allegiance, after all, has to work two ways; and one can grow weary of an allegiance which is not reciprocal.

To act is to be committed, and to be committed is to be in danger.