Freaks are called freaks and are treated as they are treated – in the main, abominably – because they are human beings who cause to echo, deep within us, our most profound terrors and desires.

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

It is rare indeed that people give. Most people guard and keep; they suppose that it is they themselves and what they identify with themselves that they are guarding and keeping, whereas what they are actually guarding and keeping is their system of reality and what they assume themselves to be.

I can't be a pessimist, because I am alive.

There is no way of conveying to the corpse the reasons you have made him one--you have the corpse, and you are, thereafter, at themercy of a fact which missed the truth, which means that the corpse has you.

History is not a procession of illustrious people. It's about what happens to a people. Millions of anonymous people is what history is about.

I am aware that no man is a villain in his own eyes.