It is a very grave matter to be forced to imitate a people for whom you know-which is the price of your performance and survival-you do not exist. It is hard to imitate a people whose existence appears, mainly, to be made tolerable by their bottomless gratitude that they are not, thank heaven, you.

Trust life, and it will teach you, in joy and sorrow, all you need to know.

The South is very beautiful but its beauty makes one sad because the lives that people live here, and have lived here, are so ugly.

To be with God is really to be involved in some enormous, overwhelming desire, and joy, and power which you cannot control, which controls you.

I will no longer take anyone's word for my experience.

James Joyce is right about history being a nightmare-- but it may be that nightmare from which no one can awaken. People are trapped in history and history in trapped in them.

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