I balked at nothing, I was above nothing. Everything had something to teach me.

No one who has studied Western history can cling to the belief that the Nazis invented genocide.

In a way, it is beautiful to be young and hard up. With the right wife, and I had her, deprivation became a game.

Young writers should be encouraged to write, and discouraged from thinking they are writers.

When I was twenty I was in love with words, a wordsmith. I didn't know enough to know when people were letting words get in their way. Now I like the words to disappear, like a transparent curtain.

One cannot be pessimistic about the West. This is the native home of hope. When it fully learns that cooperation, not rugged individualism, is the quality that most characterizes and preserves it, then it will have achieved itself and outlived its origins. Then it has a chance to create a society to match its scenery.

If we don't know where we are, we don't know who we are.