“People can’t, unhappily, invent their mooring posts, their lovers and their friends, anymore than they can invent their parents.”

Generations do not cease to be born, and we are responsible to them because we are the only witnesses they have.

Anyone who has ever struggled with poverty knows how extremely expensive it is to be poor.

We all commit our crimes. The thing is to not lie about them.

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.

Most of us, no matter what we say, are walking in the dark, whistling in the dark.

Freedom is not something that anybody can be given. Freedom is something people take, and people are as free as they want to be.

People are too various to be treated so lightly. I am too various to be trusted.

For nothing is more unbearable, once one has it, than freedom.

People who treat other people as less than human must not be surprised when the bread they have cast on the waters comes floating back to them, poisoned.

The moment we cease to hold each other, the sea engulfs us and the light goes out.

The impossible is the least that one can demand.

Most of us are about as eager to be changed as we were to be born, and go through our changes in a similar state of shock.

You write in order to change the world, if you alter, even by a millimeter, the way people look at reality, then you can change it.

Everyone wishes to be loved, but in the event, nearly no one can bear it. Everyone desires love but also finds it impossible to believe that he deserves it.

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.

I often wonder what I’d do if there weren’t any books in the world.

My best friend is the one who brings out the best in me.

There is nothing that can equal the treasure of so many shared memories.

I get by with a little help from my friends.

General benevolence, but not general friendship, made a man what he ought to be.

If family or friends are unwell or ill – it’s perhaps the only thing that really can make one feel vulnerable.

I am learning to live close to the lives of my friends without ever seeing them. No miles of any measurement can separate your soul from mine.

He is his own best friend and takes delight in privacy whereas the man of no virtue or ability is his own worst enemy and is afraid of solitude.

I didn’t have no friends or nothing. I was a nerdy kid.