You think your pains and heartbreaks are unprecedented in the history of the world, but then you read. [and then you discover that others have suffered much more than you and your problems look good in comparison]

A writer has to take all the risks of putting down what he sees.

You've got to tell the world how to treat you. If the world tells you how you are going to be treated, you are in trouble.

Identity would seem to be the garment with which one covers the nakedness of the self: in which case, it is best that the garment be loose, a little like the robes of the desert, through which one's nakedness can always be felt, and, sometimes, discerned. This trust in one's nakedness is all that gives one the power to change one's robes.

One can only face in others what one can face in oneself.

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

It is impossible to pretend that you are not heir to, and therefore, however inadequately or unwillingly, responsible to, and for, the time and place that give you life -- without becoming, at very best, a dangerously disoriented human being.