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.

I love America more than any other country in the world, and, exactly for this reason, I insist on the right to criticize her perpetually. I think all theories are suspect, that the finest principles may have to be modified, or may even be pulverized by the demands of life, and that one must find, therefore, one's own moral center and move through the world hoping that this center will guide one aright.

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. One is responsible to life: It is the small beacon in that terrifying darkness from which we come and to which we shall return. One must negotiate this passage as nobly as possible, for the sake of those who are coming after us.

The responsibility of a writer is to excavate the experience of the people who produced him.

The writer's only real task: to recreate out of the disorder of life that order which is art

Precisely at the point when you begin to develop a conscience you must find yourself at war with your society.

One can only face in others what one can face in oneself.