Great hope has no real footing unless one is willing to face into the doom that may also be on the way. p.207
When I read it, I don't wince, which is all I ever ask for a book I write.
The horror of the Twentieth Century was the size of each new event, and the paucity of its reverberation.
Culture's worth huge, huge risks. Without culture we're all totalitarian beasts.
If a person is not talented enough to be a novelist, not smart enough to be a lawyer, and his hands are too shaky to perform operations, he becomes a journalist.
Every moment of one's existence one is growing into more or retreating into less. One is always living a little more or dying a little bit.
