... oh, I long to prove myself by writing! The best seems to die in me when I give it up. It is the self I love--not this efficient, philanthropic self.

Racism is an ism to which everyone in the world today is exposed; for or against, we must take sides. And the history of the future will differ according to the decision which we make.

The trouble with life isn't that there is no answer, it's that there are so many answers.

Our national experience in Americanizing millions of Europeans whose chief wish was to become Americans has been a heady wine which has made us believe, as perhaps no nation before us has ever believed, that, given the slimmest chance, all peoples will pattern themselves upon our model.

I have always used the world of make-believe with a certain desperation.

Culture, with its processes and functions, is a subject upon which we need all the enlightenment we can achieve, and there is no direction in which we can seek with greater reward than in the facts of pre-literate societies.

It is my necessary breath of life to understand and expression is the only justification of life that I can feel without prodding.