Imagination has to do with one's awareness of the reality of other people as well as of one's own reality. Imagination is a bridge between the provincialism of the self and the great world.

Life is all getting used to what you're not used to.

If a person had accused him of meanness, he could have defended himself. But with a dog - you did something cheap to it when you were sure no one was looking, and it was as though you had done it in front of a mirror.

To be human is to be in a story.

Families hold each other in an iron grip of definition. One must break the grip, somehow.

I've always known a lot of very bad people, destructive, brutes of a certain kind. Then I've seen these lovely impulses and what not, and they've stayed with me and comforted me.

The language of labels is like paper money, issued irresponsibly, with nothing of intrinsic value behind it, that is, with no effort of the intelligence to see, to really apprehend.