We all commit our crimes. The thing is to not lie about them — to try to understand what you have done, why you have done it. That way, you can begin… - James Baldwin

People who believe that they are strong-willed and the masters of their destiny can only continue to believe this by becoming specialists in self-deception. Their decisions are not really decisions at all — a real decision makes one humble, one knows that it is at the mercy of more things than can be named — but elaborate systems of evasion, of illusion, designed to make themselves and the world appear to be what they and the world are not.

If you're treated a certain way you become a certain kind of person. If certain things are described to you as being real they're real for you whether they're real or not.

Confronted with the impossibility of remaining faithful to one’s beliefs, and the equal impossibility of becoming free of them, one can be driven to the most inhuman excesses.