There are people in the world for whom "coming along" is a perpetual process, people who are destined never to arrive.

There is a 'sanctity' involved with bringing a child into this world: it is better than bombing one out of it.

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

Fonny and I just sat there... while the voices of the congregation rose and rose around us, without mercy... Teddy had the tambourine, and gave the cue to the piano player-I never got to know him: a long dark, evil-looking brother, with hands made for strangling; and with these hands he attacked the keyboard like he was beating the brains out of someone he remembered. No doubt the congregation had their memories, too, and they went to pieces. The church began to rock.

Man cannot live by profit alone.

You have to go the way your blood beats. If you don't live the only life you have, you won't live some other life, you won't live any life at all.

For nothing is fixed, forever and forever, it is not fixed; the earth is always shifting, the light is always changing, the sea does not cease to grind down rock. Generations do not cease to be born, and we are responsible to them because we are the only witnesses they have. The sea rises, the light fails, lovers cling to each other and children cling to us. The moment we cease to hold each other, the moment we break faith with one another, the sea engulfs us and the light goes out.