Art changes all the time, but it never "improves." It may go down, or up, but it never improves as technology and medicine improve.

The writer writes in order to teach himself, to understand himself, to satisfy himself; the publishing of his ideas, though it brings gratification, is a curious anticlimax.

One writes to make a home for oneself, on paper, in time, in others' minds.

We never know how much has been missing from our lives until a true writer comes along.

To have a sense of history one must consider oneself a piece of history.

What happens whenever we convert a writer into a symbol is that we lose the writer himself in all his indefeasible singularity, his particular inimitable genius.

A classic is a book that survives the circumstances that made it possible yet alone keeps those circumstances alive.

When a writer talks about his work, he's talking about a love affair.

History has become more important than ever because of the to unprecedented ability of the historical sciences to take in man's life on earth as a whole.

If we practiced medicine like we practice education, wed look for the liver on the right side and left side in alternate years.

A year after Hemingway died on the front page, Faulkner went off after a binge, as if dying was nobody's business but his own.

The past will only catch you, if you ran from it to begin with.

Because of technological limits, there is a certain amount of food that we can produce per acre. If we were to have intensive greenhouse agriculture, we could have much higher production.

I didn't really go the starving-artist route. I kind of went and did massive, commercial things.

Many people are alienated by faceless bureaucracy and what they see as an erosion of participatory democracy. Consequently, there has been a revival of interest in charitable service.

Jesus is Lord! That is not negotiable.

As poetry is the harmony of words, so music is that of notes; and as poetry is a rise above prose and oratory, so is music the exaltation of poetry.

In my whole career, I've never really gotten hurt. The only ones that really hurt me were my wives.

The constitutional freedom of religion is the most inalienable and sacred of all human rights

To be efficient means getting the job done in a smart, resourceful and timely way. To be effective means getting the right job done well, efficiently or not.

X Games, it's an event but it's still ... it's a show. I try to put on the best show possible, ... I'm thrilled. This is awesome.