If a man confessed anything on his death bed, it was the truth; for no man could stare death in the face and lie.

If a man confessed anything on his death bed, it was the truth; for no man could stare death in the face and lie.

It would have been impossible for me to have told anyone what I derived from these novels, for it was nothing less than a sense of life itself.

I listened, vaguely knowing now that I had committed some awful wrong that I could not undo, that I had uttered words I could not recall even though I ached to nullify them, kill them, turn back time to the moment before I had talked so that I could have another chance to save myself.

All literature is protest.

Whenever my environment had failed to support or nourish me, I had clutched at books.

It was not a matter of believing or disbelieving what I read, but of feeling something new, of being affected by something that made the look of the world different.