The occurrence of an event is not the same thing as knowing what it is that one has lived through. Most people had not lived -- nor could it, for that matter, be said that they had died-- through any of their terrible events. They had simply been stunned by the hammer. They passed their lives thereafter in a kind of limbo of denied and unexamined pain. The great question that faced him this morning was whether or not had had ever, really, been present at his life.

It demands great spiritual resilience not to hate the hater whose foot is on your neck, and an even greater miracle of perception and charity not to teach your child to hate.

Everything depends on how relentlessly one forces from experience the last drop, sweet or bitter, it can possibly give.

Unless a writer is extremely old when he dies, in which case he has probably become a neglected institution, his death must always seem untimely.

Recognizing a problem doesn't always bring a solution, but until we recognize that problem, there can be no solution.

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

The South is very beautiful but its beauty makes one sad because the lives that people live here, and have lived here, are so ugly.