A civilization is not destroyed by wicked people; it is not necessary that people be wicked but only that they be spineless.

It was books that taught me that the things that tormented me most were the very things that connected me with all the people who were alive, or who had ever been alive.

Everything depends on how relentlessly one forces from experience the last drop, sweet or bitter, it can possibly give.

The artistic image is not intended to represent the thing itself, but, rather, the reality of the force the thing contains.

Neither love nor terror makes one blind: indifference makes one blind.

Years ago, when he was around fourteen, he'd been all hipped on the idea of going to India. He read books about people sitting on rocks, naked, in all kinds of weather, but mostly bad, naturally, and walking barefoot through hot coals and arriving at wisdom. I used to say that it sounded to me as though they were getting away from wisdom as fast as they could. I think he sort of looked down on me for that.

Hatred, which could destroy so much, never failed to destroy the man who hated, and this was an immutable law.