Physical courage is a great test.

There are moments in Life when keeping silent becomes a fault, and speaking an obligation. A civic duty, a moral challenge, a categorical imperative from which we cannot escape.

Sometimes the dead are more alive than the living. And they can kill the living.

In the legends that males have invented to explain life, the first human creature is a man named Adam. Eve arrives later, to give him pleasure and cause trouble. In the paintings that adorn churches, God is an old man with a beard, never an old woman with white hair. And all the heroes are males: from Prometheus who discovered fire to Icarus who tried to fly, on down to Jesus whom they call the Son of God and of the Holy Spirit, almost as though the woman giving birth to him were an incubator or a wetnurse.

I don't want to hear about my death.

We are an age without leaders. We stopped having leaders at the end of the 20th century

True power does not need arrogance, a long beard and a barking voice. True power strangles you with silk ribbons, charm and intelligence.