It happened, as many things do, imperceptibly, in many ways at once. I date it - the slow crumbling of my faith, the pulverization of my fortress - from the time, about a year after I had begun to preach, when I began to read again. I justified this desire by the fact that I was still in school, and I began, fatally, with Dostoyevsky.

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.

If you're afraid to die, you will not be able to live.

The establishment of democracy on the American continent was scarcely as radical a break with the past as was the necessity, which Americans faced, of broadening this concept to include black men.

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

Experience is a private, very largely speechless affair.

A liberal: someone who thinks he knows more about your experience than you do.