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.

The hope of the world lies in what one demands, not of others, but of oneself.

The civilized have created the wretched, quite coldly and deliberately, and do not intend to change the status quo; are responsible for their slaughter and enslavement; rain down bombs on defenseless children whenever and wherever they decide that their "vital interests" are menaced, and think nothing of torturing a man to death: these people are not to be taken seriously when they speak of the "sanctity" of human life, or the "conscience" of the civilized world.

We cannot discuss the state of our minorities until we first have some sense of what we are, who we are, what our goals are, and what we take life to be. The question is not what we can do now for the hypothetical Mexican, the hypothetical Negro. The question is what we really want out of life, for ourselves, what we think is real.

... every human being is an unprecedented miracle.

God be thanked for books! They are the voices of the distant and the dead.

The role of the artist is exactly the same as the role of the lover. If I love you, I have to make you conscious of the things you don’t see.