The enslavement, humiliation, torture, and ultimate destruction of thousands upon thousands of human beings for a project for which there was ultimately no purpose is a horror that's very hard to imagine, far less understand.

The idea of the past is as useless as the idea of the future. Both could be invoked by anybody about anything. There is never any more beauty than there is now. There is no more joy or wonder or sorrow than there is now, nor perfection, nor any more evil nor any more good than there is now.

Most of us have loved. And the terror for a writer is that readers will forgive you so much, but they won't forgive you one false note about love, about which they too are expert.

A good book ... leaves you wanting to reread the book. A great book compels you to reread your own soul.

The path to survival was to never give up on the small things.

A happy man has no past, while an unhappy man has nothing else.

When forging money, I had always salved my conscience by concluding that I was merely extending the lie of commerce.