“Had my life increased, or merely added to itself? There had been addition and subtraction in my life, but how much multiplication?”

“I had walked along that street all my life, but had never been so aware that my back was to my home”

“I had this rare privilege of being able to pursue in my adult life, what had been my childhood dream.”

“When I was about thirteen years old, and had succeeded in learning to read, every increase of knowledge, especially anything respecting the free states, was an additional weight to the almost intolerable burden of my thought, 'I am a slave for life'. To my bondage I could see no end. It was a terrible reality, and I shall never be able to tell how sadly that thought chafed my young spirit.”

“I used to dream about escaping my ordinary life, but my life was never ordinary. I had simply failed to notice how extraordinary it was.”

“Where there had been hope, there was now hopelessness. Where there had been courage, there was now cynicism. Where there had been life, there was a living death. During Nixon's reign, much of life was transformed into a nightmare.”

“Still, life had a way of adding day to day”

“I had wanted life not to bother me too much, and had succeeded - and how pitiful that was.”

“I understood that as much as I had resisted the outside, as much as I had constricted my life, as much as I had closed and narrowed the channels into me, there were still many takers for the quiet heart.”

“If I had followed my better judgment always, my life would have been a very dull one.”