Death is unbearable unless you can get beyond the I.

But I cannot forgive those who did not care about more than their own glory or well-being. They thought they were civilized. They were despicable. Damn them all.

Wherever people feel safe — they will be indifferent.

The taste for worst-case scenarios reflects the need to master fear of what is felt to be uncontrollable. It also expresses an imaginative complicity with disaster.

Strictly speaking, it is doubtful that a photograph can help us understand anything.

Literature can train, and exercise, our ability to weep for those who are not us or ours.

What is the most beautiful in virile men is something feminine; what is most beautiful in feminine women is something masculine.