People who shut their eyes to reality simply invite their own destruction, and anyone who insists on remaining in a state on innocence long after that innocence is dead turns himself into a monster.
Hatred is always self hatred, and there is something suicidal about it.
People who cling to their illusions find it difficult, if not impossible, to learn anything worth learning: a people under the necessity of creating themselves must examine everything, and soak up learning the way the roots of a tree soak up water.
After departure, only invisible things are left, perhaps the life of the world is held together by invisible chains of memory and loss and love. So many things, so many people, depart! And we can only repossess them in our minds.
History is not a procession of illustrious people. It’s about what happens to a people. Millions of anonymous people is what history is about.
Nakedness has no color: this can come as news only to those who have never covered, or been covered by, another naked human being.
Voyagers discover that the world can never be larger than the person that is in the world; but it is impossible to foresee this, it is impossible to be warned.
The question of sexual dominance can exist only in the nightmare of that soul which has armed itself, totally, against the possibility of the changing motion of conquest and surrender, which is love.
Life is tragic simply because the earth turns and the sun inexorably rises and sets, and one day, for each of us, the sun will go down for the last, last time.
You know, it’s not the world that was my oppressor, because what the world does to you, if the world does it to you long enough and effectively enough, you begin to do to yourself.
The young think that failure is the Siberian end of the line, banishment from all the living, and tend to do what I then did – which was to hide.
The noblest spirit is most strongly attracted by the love of glory.
The questions which one asks oneself begin, at least, to illuminate the world, and become one’s key to the experience of others.
Every legend, moreover, contains its residuum of truth, and the root function of language is to control the universe by describing it.
If all you want to do is make money, the very last thing you need is imagination.
When you’re writing you’re trying to find out something which you don’t know.
Those kids aren’t dumb. But the people who run these schools want to make sure they don’t get smart: they are really teaching the kids to be slaves.
Heavenly witnesses are a tricky lot, to be used by whoever is closest to Heaven at the time. And legend and theology, which are designed to sanctify our fears, crimes, and aspirations, also reveal them for what they are.
The impossible is the least that one can demand.
There is a fearful splendor in absolute desolation.