To act is to be committed, and to be committed is to be in danger.

The noblest spirit is most strongly attracted by the love of glory.

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.

Hatred, which could destroy so much, never failed to destroy the man who hated, and this was an immutable law.

When you’re writing, you’re trying to find out something which you don’t know. The whole language of writing for me is finding out what you don’t want to know, what you don’t want to find out. But something forces you to anyway.

A writer has to take all the risks of putting down what he sees. No one can tell him about that. No one can control that reality. It reminds me of something Pablo Picasso was supposed to have said to Gertrude Stein while he was painting her portrait. Gertrude said, “I don’t look like that.” And Picasso replied, “You will.” And he was right.

People who remember court madness through pain, the pain of the perpetually recurring death of their innocence; people who forget court another kind of madness, the madness of the denial of pain and the hatred of innocence; and the world is mostly divided between madmen who remember and madmen forget.