I met a lot of people in Europe. I even encountered myself.

Any real change implies the breakup of the world as one has always known it, the loss of all that gave one an identity, the end of safety.

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

All racists are irresponsible.

The occurrence of an event is not the same thing as knowing what it is that one has lived through. Most people had not lived -- nor could it, for that matter, be said that they had died-- through any of their terrible events. They had simply been stunned by the hammer. They passed their lives thereafter in a kind of limbo of denied and unexamined pain. The great question that faced him this morning was whether or not had had ever, really, been present at his life.

Nothing is more desirable than to be released from an affliction, but nothing is more frightening than to be divested of a crutch.

Fonny and I just sat there... while the voices of the congregation rose and rose around us, without mercy... Teddy had the tambourine, and gave the cue to the piano player-I never got to know him: a long dark, evil-looking brother, with hands made for strangling; and with these hands he attacked the keyboard like he was beating the brains out of someone he remembered. No doubt the congregation had their memories, too, and they went to pieces. The church began to rock.