There is one expanding horror in American life. It is that our long odyssey toward liberty, democracy and freedom-for-all may be achieved in such a way that utopia remains forever closed, and we live in freedom and hell, debased of style, not individual from one another, void of courage, our fear rationalized away.

The desire for success lubricates secret prostitution in the soul.

A democracy depends upon people getting brighter all the time. Democracies are delicate. They're not just ipso facto and just go on and on.

So the blind will lead the blind, and the deaf shout warnings to one another until their voices are lost.

Great hope has no real footing unless one is willing to face into the doom that may also be on the way. p.207

One of the reasons the English got through all their falls and the loss of their empire, all their disasters, their strikes, their difficulties, their wars through the years was they had Shakespeare to fall back on. And they speak well in England.

When a novel comes, it's a grace. Something in the cosmos has forgiven you long enough so that you can start.