“I should like to be able to love my country and still love justice.”

There is scarcely any passion without struggle.

The most important thing you do everyday you live is deciding not to kill yourself.

What made me run away was doubtless not so much the fear of settling down, but of settling down permanently in something ugly.

Man is always prey to his truths. Once he has admitted them, he cannot free himself from them.

I’ve never really had much of an imagination. But still I would try to picture the exact moment when the beating of my heart would no longer be going on inside my head.

Happiness and the absurd are two sons of the same earth. They are inseparable.

After awhile you could get used to anything.

And it was like knocking four quick times on the door of unhappiness.

Integrity has no need of rules.

Don’t walk behind me; I may not lead. Don’t walk in front of me; I may not follow. Just walk beside me and be my friend.

Every act of rebellion expresses a nostalgia for innocence and an appeal to the essence of being.

The purpose of a writer is to keep civilization from destroying itself.

We are all special cases.

Autumn is a second spring when every leaf is a flower.

There are crimes of passion and crimes of logic. The boundary between them is not clearly defined.

It is a kind of spiritual snobbery that makes people think they can be happy without money.

The white men were roused by a mere instinct of self-preservation—until at last there had sprung into existence a great Ku Klux Klan, a veritable empire of the South, to protect the Southern country.

In this country your guilty until proven wealthy.

Her body is a undiscovered country and she is afraid that someone will colonize it and expect her to thank them for the wreckage.

I am in favor of helping the prosperity of all countries because, when we are all prosperous, the trade with each becomes more valuable to the other.

America is not anything if it consists of each of us. It is something only if it consists of all of us.

I do not prize the word cheap. It is not a word of inspiration. It is the badge of poverty, the signal of distress. Cheap merchandise means cheap men and cheap men mean a cheap country.

What happens to the country, to the world, depends on what we do with what others have left us.

The sharpest criticism often goes hand in hand with the deepest idealism and love of country.