I am convinced the most unfortunate people are those who would make an art of love. It sours other effort. Of all artists, they are certainly the most wretched.

Writing books is the closest men ever come to childbearing.

A modern democracy is a tyranny whose borders are undefined; one discovers how far one can go only by traveling in a straight line until one is stopped.

The function of socialism is to raise suffering to a higher level.

Khomeini has offered us the opportunity to regain our frail religion ... faith in the power of words.

There was that law of life, so cruel and so just, that one must grow or else pay more for remaining the same.

Any war that requires the suspension of reason as a necessity for support is a bad war.

America is a hurricane, and the only people who do not hear the sound are those fortunate if incredibly stupid and smug White Protestants who live in the center, in the serene eye of the big wind.

I was thinking that surgeons had to be the happiest people on earth. To cut people up and get paid for it-that's happiness, I told myself.

Love asks us that we be a little braver than is comfortable, a little more generous, a little more flexible. It means living on the edge more than we care to.

Reaching consensus in a group is often confused with finding the right answer.

Dedicate your life to solitude and mortify your members which are upon the earth.

There are decades where nothing happens

You're my home." -Travis Maddox

Surely ghosts will follow wherever there is bad record keeping

When people divorce, it's always such a tragedy. At the same time, if people stay together it can be even worse.

I think that globalization is partly responsible for the spread of the hostile, radical forms of Islam.

I think you inherit most of your talent from your parents, although sometimes a fabulously talented singer grows out of the union of two tone-deaf people

Youth is not a vanished thing but something that dwells forever in the heart.

We go to literature because it shows us some set of humane values. It is showing us how to live.

Freedom always carries a burden of proof, always throws us back on ourselves.