“I must not get ahead of myself. If I do not narrate the events of my life with rigor and harmony, I will lose my way.”

“But my whole life has been a matter of fighting for one simple hour to do what I want to do. There was always something getting in the way of my getting to myself.”

“I try to busy myself elsewhere, to arrive late; but I always lose at this game. Whatever I do, I find myself there, with nothing to do, punctual, even ahead of time.”

“A friend said, "Ah, I get it. All of my life I have gone into every next event asking, in effect, What's in it for me? Now I see that what I must do is go into every event asking, What can I do for them?" And my friend had grievously missed the point. The great discovery is that we have nothing to give at all to anyone, anywhere.”

“I have no way of knowing whether the events that I am about to narrate are effects or causes.”

“…there is not a day of my life that I am not critiquing myself to see if my politics are borne out in the way that I live and the way that I talk and present myself.”