Every legend, moreover, contains its residuum of truth, and the root function of language is to control the universe by describing it.

You write in order to change the world ... if you alter, even by a millimeter, the way people look at reality, then you can change it.

To hold in the mind forever two ideas which seemed to be in opposition. The first . . . acceptance totally without rancor, of life as it is, and men as they are [;] . . . the second . . . that one must never, in one's life, accept . . . injustices as commonplace but must fight them with all one's strength.

Societies never know it, but the war of an artist with his society is a lover's war, and he does, at his best, what lovers do, which is to reveal the beloved to himself and, with that revelation, to make freedom real.

You go into a book and you're in the dark, really. You go in with a certain fear and trembling. You know one thing. You know you will not be the same person when this voyage is over. But you don't know what's going to happen to you between getting on the boat and stepping off.

You think your pain and your heartbreak are unprecedented in the history of the world, but then you read.

The challenge is in the moment; the time is always now.