No great deed, private or public, has ever been undertaken in a bliss of certainty.

I hear it said of somebody that he is leading a double life. I think to myself: Just two?

There are times when the power of language is not the power that is needed.

Dilettantism is the sort of thing one must avoid.

I do not value religion chiefly for its morality.

What matters to me is that one identifies one's genuine obsessions, one's genuine commitments, one's genuine appetites, one pursues them seriously and far.

The world invited me many places.