You've got to tell the world how to treat you. If the world tells you how you are going to be treated, you are in trouble.

I conceive of God, in fact, as a means of liberation and not a means to control others.

There are few things under heaven more unnerving than the silent, accumulating contempt and hatred of a people.

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

It was books that taught me that the things that tormented me most were the very things that connected me with all the people who were alive, or who had ever been alive.

Sentimentality, the ostentatious parading of excessive and spurious emotion, is the mark of dishonesty...the wet eyes of the sentimentalist betray his aversion to experience, his fear of life, his arid heart; and it is always, therefore, the signal of secret and violent humanity, the mark of cruelty.

I imagine one of the reasons people cling to their hates so stubbornly is because they sense, once hate is gone, they will be forced to deal with pain.