“We must as second best, as people say, take the least of the evils.”

Address at Bennington College (30 October 1984) as published in "Reflections of a Writer: Long Work, Short Life" in The New York Times (20 March 1988)
Context: I have written almost all my life. My writing has drawn, out of a reluctant soul, a measure of astonishment at the nature of life. And the more I wrote well, the better I felt I had to write.
In writing I had to say what had happened to me, yet present it as though it had been magically revealed. I began to write seriously when I had taught myself the discipline necessary to achieve what I wanted. When I touched that time, my words announced themselves to me. I have given my life to writing without regret, except when I consider what in my work I might have done better. I wanted my writing to be as good as it must be, and on the whole I think it is. I would write a book, or a short story, at least three times — once to understand it, the second time to improve the prose, and a third to compel it to say what it still must say.
Somewhere I put it this way: first drafts are for learning what one's fiction wants him to say. Revision works with that knowledge to enlarge and enhance an idea, to re-form it. Revision is one of the exquisite pleasures of writing: The men and things of today are wont to lie fairer and truer in tomorrow's meadow, Henry Thoreau said.
I don't regret the years I put into my work. Perhaps I regret the fact that I was not two men, one who could live a full life apart from writing; and one who lived in art, exploring all he had to experience and know how to make his work right; yet not regretting that he had put his life into the art of perfecting the work.

Letter to Adam Clayton Powell Jr. (June 6, 1953); Source: United States of America Congressional Record: Proceedings and Debates of the 84th Congress, First Session, Volume 101, Part 8, July 1, 1955 to July 19, 1955 (Pages 9697 to 11002), here page 9743 https://books.google.de/books?id=iOsH3GosOr4C&amp;pg=PA9743&amp;lpg=PA9743&amp;dq=We+have+not+taken+and+we+shall+not+take+a+single+backward+step.+There+must+be+no+second+class+citizens+in+this+country.&amp;source=bl&amp;ots=K03o4EGJa7&amp;sig=ACfU3U0UNcrI-GB16SjdgDCoI3g2chwJkg&amp;hl=de&amp;sa=X&amp;ved=2ahUKEwjVu9eS9rzuAhUJkhQKHeSKBNEQ6AEwBXoECAYQAg#v=onepage&amp;q=We%20have%20not%20taken%20and%20we%20shall%20not%20take%20a%20single%20backward%20step.%20There%20must%20be%20no%20second%20class%20citizens%20in%20this%20country.&amp;f=false. <br class="br">1950s

Part Troll (2004)

Speech on the Copyright Bill (5 February 1841)

Source: Interview with the Vampire

Source: Guide for the Perplexed (c. 1190), Part III, Ch.12
Context: The second class of evils comprises such evils as people cause to each other, when, e. g., some of them use their strength against others. These evils are more numerous than those of the first kind... they likewise originate in ourselves, though the sufferer himself cannot avert them.

Quoted in Henry Hitch Adams, Years to victory (1973), p. 448.

Tito on the Hungarian Revolution of 1956, as quoted in Jasper Ridley, Tito: A Biography (Constable and Company Ltd., 1994), p. 342.
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