“The body protects itself, and the same happens in the mind. It occurs sluggishly and imperfectly, a bad job done by indifferent craftsmen, but within minutes an accretion of defence mechanisms star...”

“It wasn't like the World Trade Center, something vile and astonishing within our own borders, happening to people who'd saved coins of the same currency in their piggybanks when they were children....”

“The two ideas, justice and vocation, are inseparable.... It is by way of the principle and practice of vocation that sanctity and reverence enter into the human economy. It was thus possible for tr...”

“There can be no deep disappointment where there is not deep love.”

“Never forget that justice is what love looks like in public.”

“We are all so guilty at the way we have allowed the world around us to become more ugly and tasteless every year that we surrender to terror and steep ourselves in it.”

“Prison always has been a good place for writers, killing, as it does, the twin demons of mobility and diversion”

“All others are outside myself;I lock my door and bar them outThe turmoil, tedium, gad-about.I lock my door upon myself,And bar them out; but who shall wallSelf from myself, most loathed of all?If I...”