“Everyone, he continued, wants his life to stand for something other than what it would, which is about eighty years in the West, at any rate eighty years of working, eating, sleeping, shitting, b...”

“No sight better expresses the politics of aid, the dynamics of the West and the developing countries, than the image of children, happy or in need.”

“Everything new is on the rim of our view, in the darkness, below the horizon, so that nothing new is visible but in the light of what we know.”

“Then, as now, I believe that the English use language to hide what they mean.”

“At every stage, the world that breaks in through our senses struggles to find a footing in our brains. We might liken memories to the messages recorded on tape, but we mistake the message for the m...”

“It is no consolation to reflect that every cause itself is an effect, making the search for causes and reasons a fools errand.”

“Above his head at street level, he saw an angled aileron of a scarlet Porsche, its jaunty fin more or less at the upper edge of his window frame. A pair of very soft, clean glistening black shoes a...”

“As we stood there, chest high in water, I felt like I was in the middle of my own romance novel.”

“I will tell you what I will do and what I will not do. I will not serve that in which I no longer believe, whether it calls itself my home, my fatherland, or my church: and I will try to express my...”