Any real change implies the breakup of the world as one has always known it, the loss of all that gave one an identity, the end of safety.
Children have never been very good at listening to their elders, but they have never failed to imitate them.
The price one pays for pursuing any profession, or calling, is an immediate knowledge of its ugly side.
Christianity has operated with an unmitigated arrogance and cruelty – necessarily, since a religion ordinarily imposes on those who have discovered the true faith the spiritual duty of liberating the infidels.
A society must assume that it is stable, but the artist must know, and he must let us know, that there is nothing stable under heaven.
Any writer, I suppose, feels that the world into which he was born is nothing less than a conspiracy against the cultivation of his talent.
But the relationship of morality and power is a very subtle one. Because ultimately power without morality is no longer power.
A devotion to humanity is… too easily equated with a devotion to a Cause, and Causes, as we know, are notoriously bloodthirsty.
