I wanted to write and think. Activism is a displacing kind of passion.

We all have to die, and I preferred to have just one death. It seems to me that to suffer insult without response is to die many deaths.

I was really worn down by an American society that is racist, smugly blind to it, and hugely self-satisfied.

Every people, in order to remain healthy and strong, has to have a grasp of its foundation story. Culture is a chrysalis - it is protective, it takes care of you. That's what cultures are for. You cannot rob a people of language, culture, mother, father, the value of their labor - all of that - without doing vast damage to those people.

I've opposed black regimes and white regimes, leftist regimes and rightist regimes. I'm close to Aristide because I have respect for him, but all that is beside the point.

Americans don't bother to notice anybody else in the world.

Small wonder our national spirit is husk empty. We have more information but less knowledge. More communication but less community. More goods but less goodwill. More of virtually everything save that which the human spirit requires. So distracted have we become sating this new need or that material appetite, we hardly noticed the departure of happiness