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.

There are so many ways of being despicable it quite makes one’s head spin. But the way to be really despicable is to be contemptuous of other people’s pain.

No people come into possession of a culture without having paid a heavy price for it.

The future is like heaven-everyone exalts it but no one wants to go there now.

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.

People who treat other people as less than human must not be surprised when the bread they have cast on the waters comes floating back to them, poisoned.

It was books that taught me that the things that tormented me most were the very things that connected me with all the people who were alive, or who had ever been alive.