It is very nearly impossible... to become an educated person in a country so distrustful of the independent mind.

Hatred is always self hatred, and there is something suicidal about it.

What passes for identity in America is a series of myths about one's heroic ancestors.

For nothing is more unbearable, once one has it, than freedom.

Experience, which destroys innocence, also leads one back to it.

It comes as a great shock…to discover that the flag to which you have pledged allegiance…has not pledged allegiance to you. It comes as a great shock to see Gary Cooper killing off the Indians, and although you are rooting for Gary Cooper, that the Indians are you.

Perhaps, as we say in America, I wanted to find myself. This is an interesting phrase, not current as far as I know in the language of any other people, which certainly does not mean what it says but betrays a nagging suspicion that something has been misplaced. I think now that if I had any intimation that the self I was going to find would turn out to be only the same self from which I had spent so much time in flight, I would have stayed at home.