Americans, unhappily, have the most remarkable ability to alchemize all bitter truths into an innocuous but piquant confection and to transform their moral contradictions, or public discussion of such contradictions, into a proud decoration, such as are given for heroism on the field of battle.

If the relationship of father to son could really be reduced to biology, the whole earth would blaze with the glory of fathers and sons.

It seems to me that one ought to rejoice in the fact of death-- ought to decide, indeed, to earn one's death by confronting with passion the conundrum of life. One is responsible to life: It is the small beacon in that terrifying darkness from which we come and to which we shall return. One must negotiate this passage as nobly as possible, for the sake of those who are coming after us.

This world is white no longer, and it will never be white again.

Hatred destroys the person who hates.

For nothing is more unbearable, once one has it, than freedom.

... every human being is an unprecedented miracle.