We all commit our crimes. The thing is to not lie about them -- to try to understand what you have done, why you have done it. That way, you can begin to forgive yourself. That's very important. If you don't forgive yourself you'll never be able to forgive anybody else and you'll go on committing the same crimes forever.

The price one pays for pursuing any profession or calling is an intimate knowledge of its ugly side.

There is a 'sanctity' involved with bringing a child into this world: it is better than bombing one out of it.

There are too many things we do not wish to know about ourselves. People are not, for example, terribly anxious to be equal (equal, after all, to what and to whom?) but they love the idea of being superior.

Allegiance, after all, has to work two ways; and one can grow weary of an allegiance which is not reciprocal.

But it was not the room’s disorder which was frightening; it was the fact that when one began searching for the key to this disorder, one realized that it was not to be found in any of the usual places. For this was not a matter of habit or circumstance or temperament; it was a matter of punishment and grief.

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