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.

Sometimes you hear a person speak the truth and you know that they are speaking the truth. But you also know that they have not heard themselves, do not know what they have said: do not know that they have revealed much more than they have said. This may be why the truth remains, on the whole, so rare.

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

America sometimes resembles, at least from the point of view of a black man, an exceedingly monotonous minstrel show; the same dances, same music, same jokes. One has done (or been) the show so long that one can do it in one’s own sleep.

American history is longer, larger, more various, more beautiful, and more terrible than anything anyone has ever said about it.

I can't believe what you say, because I see what you do.

To be with God is really to be involved in some enormous, overwhelming desire, and joy, and power which you cannot control, which controls you.