There is never time in the future in which we will work out our salvation. The challenge is in the moment; the time is always now.

To ask questions of the universe, and then learn to live with those questions, is the way he achieves his own identity.

The trick is to love somebody.... If you love one person, you see everybody else differently.

To accept one’s past – one’s history – is not the same thing as drowning in it; it is learning how to use it. An invented past can never be used; it cracks and crumbles under the pressures of life like clay in a season of drought.

It is a very grave matter to be forced to imitate a people for whom you know-which is the price of your performance and survival-you do not exist. It is hard to imitate a people whose existence appears, mainly, to be made tolerable by their bottomless gratitude that they are not, thank heaven, you.

I'm beginning to think that maybe everything that happens makes sense. Like, if it didn't make sense, how could it happen?

If you really want to know something about solitude, become famous.