People pay for what they do, and still more for what they have allowed themselves to become. And they pay for it very simply; by the lives they lead. - James Baldwin

"Tell me, he said, "What is this thing about time? Why is it better to be late than early? People are always saying, we must wait, we must wait. what are they waiting for?"

"Well […] I guess people wait in order to make sure of what they feel."

"And when you have waited — -has it made you sure?

We do not trust educated people and rarely, alas, produce them, for we do not trust the independence of mind which alone makes a genuine education possible.

It was books that taught me that the things that tormented me most were the very things that connected me with all the people who were alive, or who had ever been alive.