“They seemed to be able to choose. We seemed to be able to choose, then. We were a society dying of too much choice.”

Mace Windu, p. 176
Shatterpoint (2004)

page 188
Born a Crime

Source: East of Eden (1952)
Context: When a man comes to die, no matter what his talents and influence and genius, if he dies unloved his life must be a failure to him and his dying a cold horror. It seems to me that if you or I must choose between two courses of thought or action, we should remember our dying and try so to live that our death brings no pleasure to the world.
We have only one story. All novels, all poetry, are built on the never-ending contest in ourselves of good and evil. And it occurs to me that evil must constantly respawn, while good, while virtue, is immortal. Vice has always a new fresh young face, while virtue is venerable as nothing else in the world is.
Context: In uncertainty I am certain that underneath their topmost layers of frailty men want to be good and want to be loved. Indeed, most of their vices are attempted short cuts to love. When a man comes to die, no matter what his talents and influence and genius, if he dies unloved his life must be a failure to him and his dying a cold horror. It seems to me that if you or I must choose between two courses of thought or action, we should remember our dying and try so to live that our death brings no pleasure to the world.
We have only one story. All novels, all poetry, are built on the never-ending contest in ourselves of good and evil. And it occurs to me that evil must constantly respawn, while good, while virtue, is immortal. Vice has always a new fresh young face, while virtue is venerable as nothing else in the world is.

Source: Sister Outsider: Essays and Speeches

Half Asleep in Frog Pajamas (1994)

The Eighth Day (1967)

In a logical system, it is convenient to say that possibility passes over into actuality. However, in actuality it is not so convenient, and an intermediate term is required. The intermediate term is anxiety, but it no more explains the qualitative leap than it can justify it ethically. Anxiety is neither a category of necessity nor a category of freedom; it is entangled freedom, where freedom is not free in itself but entangled, not by necessity, but in itself.
Source: 1840s, The Concept of Anxiety (1844), p. 49

Source: Return to Love

“An Interview With World-Renowned Yogini Sharon Gannon” by Alicia Silverstone, in TheKindLife.com (17 September 2014) http://thekindlife.com/blog/2014/09/an-interview-with-world-renowned-yogini-sharon-gannon/.