Americans complain a lot about the government and they voice a generalized suspicion of the government, but they constantly clammer for more of it.

Baseball, it is said, is only a game. True. And the Grand Canyon is only a hole in Arizona. Not all holes, or games, are created equal.

Some parents say it is toy guns that make boys warlike. But give a boy a rubber duck and he will seize its neck like the butt of a pistol and shout 'Bang!'

Americans are overreaching; overreaching is the most admirable and most American of the many American excesses.

The pursuit of perfection often impedes improvement.

Ronald Reagan has held the two most demeaning jobs in the country; President of the United States and radio broadcaster for the Chicago Cubs.

The unpleasant sound Bush is emitting as he traipses from one conservative gathering to another is a thin, tinny "arf" - the sound of a lap dog.

Sports is a moral undertaking because it requires of participants, and it schools spectators in the appreciation of, noble things - courage, grace under pressure, sportsmanship.

A politician's words reveal less about what he thinks about his subject than what he thinks about his audience.

A society that thinks the choice between ways of living is just a choice between equally eligible 'lifestyles' turns universities into academic cafeterias offering junk food for the mind.

Donald Trump is redundant evidence that if your net worth is high enough, your IQ can be very low and you can still intrude into American politics.

If I could work with any actor it would have to be Johnny Depp. He is cool.

I went to Iceland in 1861 and went over nearly every bit of the ground made famous by the adventures of Grettir.

[This is the] very first condition which has to be fulfilled in every kind of propaganda: a systematically one-sided attitude towards every problem that has to be dealt with.

The heart of the problem is not so much how we see objects in depth, as how we see the constant layout of the world around us. Space, as such, empty space, is not visible, but surfaces are.

Starbucks is planning to close down all the restrooms in its New York locations. Which explains the most popular new Starbucks order: An empty cup.

To shoot at crows is powder flung away.

When I was young, I did actually model and was much photographed by famous photographers. But I was always a bookworm.

I looked back at some of my earlier published stories with genuine horror and remorse. I got thinking, How many extant copies might there be, who owns them, and do they keep their doors locked?

Superfluous lags the veteran on the stage, Till pitying Nature signs the last release, And bids afflicted worth retire to peace.