The establishment of democracy on the American continent was scarcely as radical a break with the past as was the necessity, which Americans faced, of broadening this concept to include black men.

All I know about music is that not many people ever really hear it.

When you're writing you're trying to find out something which you don't know.

After departure, only invisible things are left, perhaps the life of the world is held together by invisible chains of memory and loss and love. So many things, so many people, depart! And we can only repossess them in our minds.

We do not trust educated people and rarely, alas, produce them, for we do not trust the independence of mind which alone makes a genuine education possible.

But the relationship of morality and power is a very subtle one. Because ultimately power without morality is no longer power.

What passes for identity in America is a series of myths about one's heroic ancestors.