“America is so vast that almost everything said about it is likely to be true, and the opposite is probably equally true.”

“But Venice, like Oxford, had kept the background for romance, and, to the true romantic, background was everything, or almost everything.”

“Everything I ever said to you was true and is true.”

“Everything is true and not true about everything. That’s one thing I’ve learned.”

“When the Kerner Commission told white America what black America has always known, that prejudice and hatred built the nation’s slums, maintains them and profits by them, white America could not believe it. But it is true. Unless we start to fight and defeat the enemies in our own country, poverty and racism, and make our talk of equality and opportunity ring true, we are exposed in the eyes of the world as hypocrites when we talk about making people free - (Chapter 9).”

“What is true about music is true about life: that beauty reveals everything because it expresses nothing.”