God be thanked for books! They are the voices of the distant and the dead.

The interior life is a real life, and the intangible dreams of people have a tangible effect on the world.

I often wonder what I'd do if there weren't any books in the world.

You think your pains and heartbreaks are unprecedented in the history of the world, but then you read. [and then you discover that others have suffered much more than you and your problems look good in comparison]

Words like "freedom," "justice," "democracy" are not common concepts; on the contrary, they are rare. People are not born knowing what these are. It takes enormous and, above all, individual effort to arrive at the respect for other people that these words imply.

We are responsible for the world in which we find ourselves, if only because we are the only sentient force which can change it.

I think white gay people feel cheated because they were born, in principle, in a society in which they were supposed to be safe. The anomaly of their sexuality puts them in danger, unexpectedly.