“A dispassionate conceptual development of the typology of violence must by definition ignore its traumatic impact. Yet there is a sense in which a cold analysis of violence somehow reproduces and participates in its horror. A distinction needs to be made, as well, between (factual) truth and truthfulness: what renders a report of a raped woman (or any other narrative of a trauma) truthful is its very factual unreliability, its confusion, its inconsistency. If the victim were able to report on her painful and humiliating experience in a clear manner, with all the data arranged in a consistent order, this very quality would make us suspicious of its truth.”

“Truth is what is true, and it's not necessarily factual. Truth and fact are not the same thing. Truth does not contradict or deny facts, but it goes through and beyond facts. This is something that it is very difficult for some people to understand. Truth can be dangerous.”

“I was very afraid at the beginning, until Master told me that pain isn't the truth; it's what you have to get through in order to find the truth.”

“Truth doesn't have a color. And it doesn't have a smell. It doesn't quiver or make noise. It doesn't shimmer. Yet it does - it does all these things, depending. Because truth is capricious. It may be hovering there all the while, but one moment you think you see it - it seems so clear, so well defined, as if you could catch it and hold it steady in your hand. But the next moment it's gone, or at least so fast moving it's a blur, at best. That's the thing Africa taught me about truth. You know it's truth because it's busy. Any seeming truth that's idle? Well, that's just not truth.”

“I always speak the truth. Not the whole truth, because there's no way, to say it all. Saying it all is literally impossible: words fail. Yet it's through this very impossibility that the truth holds onto the real.”

“The personality is defined by its inconsistencies, not its consistencies. It's what makes us unique and who we are.”