The role of art is to make a world which can be inhabited.

Remember that every man is a variation of yourself. No man's guilt is not yours, nor is any man's innocence a thing apart.

What a people talk about means something. What they don't talk about means something.

In the most commonplace, tiresome, ridiculous, malicious, coarse, crude, or even crooked people or events I had to seek out rare things, good things, comic things, and I did so.

Lionel whispered because he was under the impression that it was out of respect for books, not consideration for readers.

When I began to wait to live I really began to wait to die.

I'm no Armenian. I'm an American. Well, the truth is I am both and neither. I love Armenia and I love America and I belong to both, but I am only this: an inhabitant of the earth, and so are you, whoever you are. I tried to forget Armenia but I couldn't do it.