…innocence ends when one is stripped of the delusion that one likes oneself.
~Joan Didion On Self-Respect

People with self respect have the courage of their mistakes.
~Joan Didion On Self-Respect

To have that sense of one’s intrinsic worth which constitutes self respect is potentially to have everything: the ability to discriminate, to love and to remain indifferent.
~Joan Didion On Self-Respect

To assign unanswered letters their proper weight, to free us from the expectations of others, to us back to ourselves – there lies the great, the singular, power, of self-respect. Without it, one eventually discovers, the final turn of the screw: one runs away to find oneself, and finds no one at home.
~Joan Didion On Self-Respect

I imagine that one of the reasons people cling to their hates so stubbornly is because they sense, once hate is gone, that they will be forced to deal with pain.
Notes of A Nation’s Son

…civility is not a sign of weakness and sincerity is always subject to proof.
~JFK

Love at 18 is largely an attempt to find out who we are by listening to our own echo in the words of another.
~Gail Sheeby The Urge to Merge

Solitude is the salt of personhood. It brings out the authentic flavor of every experience.
~Mary Sarton The Rewards of Living a Solitary Life

Did it indeed seem probable…that the answers to the riddles of creation would be supplied by people too ignorant to understand the mechanics of rainfall?
Catch 22 Ch.25, p.243

He could not make them shut up; they were worse than women. They had not brains enough to be introverted and repressed.
Catch 22 Ch.32, p.357

…he was jeopardizing his traditional rights of freedom and independence by daring to exercise them.
Is that what the whole WTO thing is about too? Catch 22 Ch.39, p.414

Hate – like faith or love or war – justifies everything.
Scary thought. Dawn p.93

The truth is that our civilization is not Christian; it is a tragic compound of great ideal and fearful practice, of high assurance and desperate anxiety, of loving charity and fearful clutching of possessions.
Cry, The Beloved Country Ch.28, p.188

Aye, but the murderer afraid of death had once been a child afraid of the night.
Cry, the Beloved Country Ch.29, p.249

I have never thought that a Christian would be free of suffering umfundisi. For our Lord suffered. And I come to believe that he suffered, not to save us from suffering, but to teach us how to bear suffering. For he knew that there is no life without suffering.
Cry, the Beloved Country Ch.30, p.261

Survival was an accident…you came a minute too late or too soon – that made the difference. Those who survived [the holocaust], therefore, know they must do something with every minute of their lives
~Elie Wiesel

The first writing is always a voice for myself. The rewrite is for others.
~Elie Wiesel

Knowledge, in itself, may be anti-human if it lacks ethical demensions.
~Elie Wiesel

There is truth in questions. Questions never provoked a war.
~Elie Wiesel

Not to transmit my experience is to betray the experience.
~Elie Wiesel

Once you get used to it, reality is as irresistible as a club.
Invisible Man Epilogue p.572

Life is to be lived, not controlled; and humanity is won by continuing to play in face of certain defeat.
Invisible Man p.577

To go wrong in one’s own way is better than to go right in someone else’s.
Crime and Punishment Part III, Ch. 1

He is a man of intelligence, but to act sensibly, intelligence is not enough.
Crime and Punishment Part III, Ch.3

God give peace to the dead, the living have still to live.
Crime and Punishment Part III, Ch.4

No, life is only given to me once and I shall never have it again; I don’t want to wait for ‘the happiness of all.’ I want to live myself, or else better not live at all.
Crime and Punishment Part III, Ch.6, p.239

When reason fails, the devil helps!
Crime and Punishment Part I, Ch.6, 65

Nothing in the world is harder than speaking the truth and nothing easier than flattery. If there’s the hundredth part of a false note in speaking the truth it leads to discourse and that leads to trouble. But if all, to the last note, is false in flattery, it is just as agreeable and is heard not without satisfaction. It may be a coarse satisfaction, but still a satisfaction. And however coarse the flattery, at least half will be sure to seem true.
Crime and Punishment Part VI, Ch.4, p.410

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