“When a man cannot choose, he ceases to be a man.”

“In a story you had to find a reason, but real life gets on very well without even Freudian motivations.”

“Life's only choosing when to die. Life's a big postponement because the choice is so difficult. It's a tremendous relief not to have to choose.”

“Dreams go by opposites I was once told.”

“We can destroy what we have written, but we cannot unwrite it.”

“You've sinned, I suppose, but your punishment has been out of all proportion. They have turned you into something other than a human being. You have no power of choice any longer. You are committed...”

“He was, however, unable to give much prolonged or continuous thought to anything that evening , or to concentrate on any one idea; and anyway, even if he had been able to, he would not have found h...”

“Nature can counsel nothing but crime.”

“A criminal remains a criminal whether he uses a convict's suit or a monarch's crown.”

“Franny understood then that grace was not like a present. It could not be given, and it could not be taken away.”

“Crime and punishment can be summed up in two classifications: there are bad people and there are people who get into bad situations. The lines for liberation and rehabilitation should first begin w...”

“Crack had a social logic to it, a specific kind of reasoning that drew from a vast well of common experience for its symbolic resonance. Crack stood for pain and power, chaos and order, the truth b...”

“If it is true that nature abhors a vacuum, then criminality regards it as a business opportunity.”