“Is a PLONGEUR'S work really necessary to civilization? We have a feeling that it must be 'honest' work, because it is hard and disagreeable, and we have made a sort of fetish of manual work. We see...”

“At 50, everyone has the face he deserves.”

“We sleep soundly in our beds, because rough men stand ready in the night to do violence on those who would harm us"Orwell cited Kipling's phrase "making mock of uniforms that guard you while you sl...”

“On the whole human beings want to be good, but not too good, and not quite all the time.”

“We have now sunk to a depth at which restatement of the obvious is the first duty of intelligent men.”

“In a time of deceit telling the truth is a revolutionary act.”

“I am all in a sea of wonders. I doubt; I fear; I think strange things, which I dare not confess to my own soul.”

“If you take too long in deciding what to do with your life, you'll find you've done it.”

“Fear and doubt are major stampeders.”

“As long as there have been women." Mom told me, "there have been ways to punish them for being women.”

“In their silence they continued both to protect me and to punish me. The memory of that night was now the only tie between us, eclipsing everything else.”

“I'm more haunted by how what I've said and the things I've done have caused harm to myself and others than I am worried that God will punish me for being bad. Because in the end, we aren't punished...”

“But love's a malady without a cure.”

“One cannot violate the promptings of one's nature without having that nature recoil upon itself.”

“My whole family could sing. My family harmonized without any instruments to accompany them.”