Great art is never perfect; perfect art is never great.

To the intelligent man or woman, life appears infinitely mysterious. But the stupid have an answer for every question.

The duty of a patriot is to protect his country from its government.

May your trails be crooked, winding, lonesome, dangerous, leading to the most amazing view. May your mountains rise into and above the clouds.

I hold no preference among flowers, so long as they are wild, free, spontaneous.

Society is like a stew. If you don't stir it up every once in a while then a layer of scum floats to the top.

A patriot must always be ready to defend his country against his government.

Growth for the sake of growth is the ideology of the cancer cell.

Civilization is a youth with a molotov cocktail in his hand. Culture is the Soviet tank or L.A. cop that guns him down.

Wilderness is not a luxury but a necessity of the human spirit.

There is science, logic, reason; there is thought verified by experience. And then there is California.

When someone asked Abraham Lincoln, after he was elected president, what he was going to do about his enemies, he replied, "I am going to destroy them. I am going to make them my friends."

There is one ray of hope. It seems to me that today the responsible leaders of the several peoples have, in the main, the honest will to abolish war.

No blame should attach to telling the truth. But it does, it does.

Rank is a great beautifier.

... the first step in understanding a people is to know the extent of their mortality, the things from which they suffer and die.

You have to strive every minute to get rid of the life that you have planned in order to have the life that's waiting to be yours. Move, move, move.

If I'm not comfortable in my own skin or confident in who I am, then I'm going to pick parts based on how people are going to view them, not based on what I find challenging or entertaining.

I watch my heart disappearing into her rosebud mouth. My Valentine's jest somehow seems less funny.

I think you put art out into the world, and sometimes it's divisive, sometimes it's embraced. Sometimes people cry, laugh or have complicated reactions.

The last sentence of a book is, of course, where you have to stop.