No one can possibly know what is about to happen: it is happening, each time, for the first time, for the only time.

Americans should never come to Europe,' she said, and tried to laugh and began to cry, 'it means they never can be happy again. What's the good of an American who isn't happy? Happiness was all we had.

It is impossible to pretend that you are not heir to, and therefore, however inadequately or unwillingly, responsible to, and for, the time and place that give you life -- without becoming, at very best, a dangerously disoriented human being.

To be born in a free society and not to be born free is to be born into a lie. To be told by co-citizens and co-Christians that you have no value, no history, have never done anything that is worthy of human respect destroys you because in the beginning you believe it.

The purpose of art is to lay bare the questions that have been hidden by the answers.

Hatred is always self hatred, and there is something suicidal about it.

I am what time, circumstance, history, have made of me, certainly, but I am also, much more than that. So are we all.