I think Americans are terrified of feeling anything. I never met a people more infantile in my life.

Love takes off masks that we fear we cannot live without and know we cannot live within.

People are trapped in history and history is trapped in them.

Remember, to hate, to be violent, is demeaning. It means you're afraid of the other side of the coin -- to love and be loved.

You write in order to change the world.

People who have been wronged will attempt to right the wrong; they would not be people if they didn't. They can rarely afford to be scrupulous about the means they will use. They will use such means as come to hand. Neither, in the main, will they distinguish one oppressor from another, nor see through to the root principle of their oppression.

Perhaps the whole root of our trouble, the human trouble, is that we will sacrifice all the beauty of our lives, will imprison ourselves in totems, taboos, crosses, blood sacrifices, steeples, mosques, races, armies, flags, nations, in order to deny the fact of death, the only fact we have. It seems to me that one ought to rejoice in the fact of death - ought to decide, indeed, to earn one's death by confronting with passion the conundrum of life.