In overlooking, denying, evading this complexity--which is nothing more than the disquieting complexity of ourselves--we are diminished and we perish; only within this web of ambiguity, paradox, this hunger, danger, darkness, can we find at once ourselves and the power that will free us from ourselves. It is this power of revelation that is the business of the novelist, this journey toward a more vast reality which must take precedence over other claims.

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.

Freedom lurked around us and I understood, at last, that he could help us be free if we would listen, that he would never be free until we did.

You have to decide who you are and force the world to deal with you, not with its idea of you.

The American ideal is, after all, that everyone should be as much alike as possible.

The face of a lover is an unknown, precisely because it is invested with so much of oneself. It is a mystery, containing, like all mysteries, the possibility of torment.

Christianity has operated with an unmitigated arrogance and cruelty - necessarily, since a religion ordinarily imposes on those who have discovered the true faith the spiritual duty of liberating the infidels.