“I learned the joke at the core of American self-improvement: knowledge was so much junk to be processed one way or another at great universities. The real treasure the great universities offered wa...”

“That's what attracts us to serious paintings, I think: that shortfall, which we might call "personality", or maybe even "pain".”

“We're doomed to repeat the past no matter what. That's what it is to be alive. It's pretty dense kids who haven't figured that out by the time they're ten.... Most kids can't afford to go to Harvar...”

“Here is the solution to the American drug problem suggested a couple years back by the wife of our President: "Just say no.”

“Everybody who is alive is a survivor, and everybody who is dead isn't," I said."So everybody alive must have the Survivor's Syndrome. It's that or death. I am so damn sick of people telling me prou...”

“Painters--and storytellers, including poets and playwrights and historians, they are the justices of the Supreme Court of Good and Evil, of which I am now a member, and to which you may belong some...”

“I'm the girl nobody knows until she commits suicide. Then suddenly everyone had a class with her.”

“It's okay. We aren't in the same class. Just don't forget that some of us watch the sunset too.”

“We are the same, you and I. Whether samurai or night-hawk, the Suruga Dainagon or member of the Toudouza, it makes no difference. My sword is the proof...."These words, wrung from the very depths o...”

“The idea of marrying Lukan made her skin crawl. He was a Chenayan. She, a Norin. He was her conqueror. She, his conquered. He had been born and raised to lord over her. She had been born and raised...”

“In this becalmed zone the sea has a smooth surface, the palm-tree stirs gently in the breeze, the waves lap against the pebbles and raw materials are ceaselessly transported, justifying the presenc...”

“In the heat of the battle, all internal barriers break down; the puppet bourgeoisie of businessmen and shopkeepers, the urban proletariat, which is always in a privileged position, the lumpen-prole...”

“You know and we know, as practical men that the question of justice arises only between parties equal in strength and that the strong do what they can, and the weak suffer what they must.”

“The Imperial forces must keep their hands off, but they find that they can do much even so. Each sector is encouraged to be suspicious of its neighbors. Within each sector, economic and social clas...”

“If true Christianity consists in carrying out in our daily lives the teachings of Christ, who will say that we are commanded to civilize with dynamite and proselyte with the sword? ... Imperialism ...”