Any departure from fact is the first step on a slippery slope toward unbelievability.

No longer a mark of distinction or proof of achievement, a college education is these days a mere rite of passage, a capstone to adolescent party time.

Where a generation ago people felt entitled to a chance at education, they now feel entitled to the credential affirming that they have completed a course of study regardless of their actual mastery.

Ultimately it is the yearning to believe that anyone can be brought up to college level that has brought colleges down to everyone's level.

The fact is that some people are better than others - smarter, harder working, more learned, more productive, harder to replace.

The dominant mood of contemporary American culture is the self-celebration of the peasantry.

A poet laureate of adolescent sexuality and middle-age longing.

The very essence of school is elitism. Schools exist to teach, to test, to rank hierarchically to promote the idea that knowing and understanding more is better than knowing and understanding less.

In my mind, partial failure is always better than delusory success.

It is scarcely the same thing to put a man on the Moon as to put a bone in your nose.

We just want to make the walls cave in and the ceiling collapse. Music is meant to be played as loudly as possible, really raw and punchy, and I'll punch out anyone who doesn't like it the way I do.

Beauty and sadness always go together.

Freud did some serious damage to American literature - a lot of writers began therapy in the 1940s, after which they all became terribly egocentric.

Open all your pores and bathe in all the tides of nature, in all her streams and oceans, at all seasons.

The whole [Scotch] nation hitherto has been void of wit and humour, and even incapable of relishing it.

Zen is not, in my view, philosophy or mysticism. It is simply a practice of readjustment of nervous activity. That is, it restores the distorted nervous system to its normal functioning.

It must be weird having one child.

Behind every adversity - is an opportunity!

We are taught for the schoolroom, not for life.

Life piles up so fast that I have no time to write out the equally fast rising mound of reflections.