Anything that keeps old words in circulation is to be treasured, the French revolution be damned.

We have a name for the sum of grievances and compromises, this sheer normality of life lived among other people. We call it civilization. Culture, society, the workaday interactions of ordinary time.

(Dune's Frank) Herbert made religion the inescapable instrument of cultural change.

People who are easily embarrassed – those who blush too often and too soon – usually end up retreating from excellence.

A fierce hatred of embarrassment ruled a surprising amount of the life of Moses Malone, the Hall of Fame basketball center.

The depth of my feelings is proportional to the depth of the color.

I sound contemptuous, but I am not. I am interested--intrigued even--by the way time erases real lives, leaving only vague imprints. Blood and spirit fade away so that only names and dates remain.

I never hear about dear Mike. I wrote Ellen Greene and asked about him and she replyed and never mentioned Mike but told me all about her roomatism. As if I cared about her roomatism.

The Good News of love must be a lifestyle, not a program for Christian

There are planes that are not light. There are planes that are shadowy. But that is not our interest in meditation. We want brightness, ecstasy, brilliance beyond comprehension.

Maybe we should all just listen to records and quit our jobs

It's the cynics who never get married.

We have not been successful in deterring the growth or expansion of any terrorist group that we've been fighting.

I feel differently immediately when I start to put weight on. I don't like that sluggish, blunted disposition that I have when that happens.

Don't you think that as a people, Americans have less poetry, real poetry, in their souls than any other nations?