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

I'm beginning to think that maybe everything that happens makes sense. Like, if it didn't make sense, how could it happen?

It was as though we were a picture, trapped in time: this had been happening for hundreds of years, people sitting in a room, waiting for dinner, and listening to the blues.

Hatred destroys the person who hates.

Because I was raised in a Christian culture I never considered myself to be a totally free human being.

I often wonder what I'd do if there weren't any books in the world.

But it was not the room’s disorder which was frightening; it was the fact that when one began searching for the key to this disorder, one realized that it was not to be found in any of the usual places. For this was not a matter of habit or circumstance or temperament; it was a matter of punishment and grief.