She was twenty and had come to realize that, though she had a voice, she wasn't a singer; that to endure and embrace the life of a singer demands a whole lot more than a voice.

It is a great shock at the age of five or six to find that in a world of Gary Coopers you are the Indian.

Sentimentality, the ostentatious parading of excessive and spurious emotion, is the mark of dishonesty, the inability to feel.

But it was not the room’s disorder which was frightening; it was the fact that when one began searching for the key to this disorder, one realized that it was not to be found in any of the usual places. For this was not a matter of habit or circumstance or temperament; it was a matter of punishment and grief.

Be careful what you set your heart upon - for it will surely be yours.

Any real change implies the breakup of the world as one has always known it, the loss of all that gave one an identity, the end of safety.

The American idea of racial progress is measured by how fast I become white.