I never have been in despair about the world. Enraged. I've been enraged by the world, but never despair. I cannot afford despair...you can't tell the children that there is no hope.
"I think this nation should be, for the foreseeable future, in mourning; one must face the fact that this Christian nation may never have read any of the Gospels, but they do understand money."
"You think your pain and your heartbreak are unprecedented in the history of the world, but then you read."
"History, as nearly no one seems to know, is not merely something to be read. And it does not refer merely, or even principally, to the past. On the contrary, the great force of history comes from the fact that we carry it within us, are unconsciously controlled by it in many ways, and history is literally present in all that we do. It could scarcely be otherwise, since it is to history that we owe our frames of reference, our identities, and our aspirations."
“It took many years of vomiting up all the filth I’d been taught about myself, and half-believed, before I was able to walk on the earth as though I had a right to be here.”
"Love takes off the masks that we fear we cannot live without and know we cannot live within."
"It is certain, in any case, that ignorance, allied with power, is the most ferocious enemy justice can have."
"I imagine one of the reasons people cling to their hates so stubbornly is because they sense, once hate is gone, they will be forced to deal with pain."