It is a very rare man who does not victimize the helpless.

One cannot deny the humanity of another without diminishing one's own.

Love takes off masks that we fear we cannot live without and know we cannot live within.

It is certain, in any case, that ignorance, allied with power, is the most ferocious enemy justice can have.

European society has always been divided into classes in a way that American society never has been. A European writer considers himself to be part of an old and honorable tradition--of intellectual activity, of letters--and his choice of a vocation does not cause him any uneasy wonder as to whether or not it will cost him all his friends. But this tradition does not exist in America.

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.

You have to decide who you are and force the world to deal with you, not with its idea of you.