I want to be an honest man and a good writer.

The purpose of education...is to create in a person the ability to look at the world for himself, to make his own decisions.

You go into a book and you're in the dark, really. You go in with a certain fear and trembling. You know one thing. You know you will not be the same person when this voyage is over. But you don't know what's going to happen to you between getting on the boat and stepping off.

An identity is questioned only when it is menaced, as when the mighty begin to fall, or when the wretched begin to rise, or when the stranger enters the gates, never, thereafter, to be a stranger.

Most of us are about as eager to change as we were to be born, and go through our changes in a similar state of shock.

People are trapped in history and history is trapped in them.

Life is tragic simply because the earth turns and the sun inexorably rises and sets, and one day, for each of us, the sun will go down for the last, last time.