The country of the tourist pamphlet always is another country, an embarrassing abstraction of the desirable that, thank God, does not exist on this planet, where there are always ants and bad smells and empty Coca-Cola bottles to keep the grubby finger-print of reality upon the beautiful.

It's easier for the former masters to put aside the masks that hid their humanity than for the former slaves to recognise the faces underneath. Or to trust that this is not a new mask these are wearing.

it's impossible to conquer all fear and loss by preparation. There are always sources of desolation that aren't taken into account because no one knows what they will be.

It was a miracle; it was all a miracle: and one ought to have known, from the sufferings of saints, that miracles are horror.

In a certain sense a writer is 'selected' by his subject - his subject being the consciousness of his own era.

You can't be afraid to do good in case evil results.

Art defies defeat by its very existence, representing the celebration of life, in spite of all attempts to degrade and destroy it.