I'm a novelist who read a lot as a kid. When you grow up on books and then grow up to write books, famous authors are a lot more meaningful to you than TV and movie stars.

An optimist stays up until midnight to see the new year in. A pessimist stays up to make sure the old year leaves.

We hope that, when the insects take over the world, they will remember with gratitude how we took them along on all our picnics.

The eagle may soar; beavers build dams.

The US has not imposed democracy in Yemen, its people have.

The whale is endangered, while the ant continues to do just fine.

Even pearls are dark before the whiteness of his teeth.

Money won't buy happiness, but it will pay the salaries of a large research staff to study the problem.

Youth is when you're allowed to stay up late on New Year's Eve. Middle age is when you're forced to.

Now that women are jockeys, baseball umpires, atomic scientists, and business executives, maybe someday they can master parallel parking.

The government is shutting down the coal industry, they say it's cheaper to draw nuclear power off the French grid and cheaper to buy coal from Colombia.

In the long run managements stressing accounting appearance over economic substance usually achieve little of either.

My solution to the problem of unleashing creativity is always to set up a target. The best example of this was the Apollo project in the United States.

All you have to do to be a camera actor is tell the truth.

Sappho and Emily Dickinson are the only woman geniuses in poetic history.

Keep your standards high, and any guy who is worth it will rise to meet them.

It Is in the Agricultural Sector That the Battle for Long- Term Economic Development Will Be Won or Lost.

When I was growing up in Montana I had two dreams: I wanted to be a paleontologist and I wanted to have a pet dinosaur and so that's what I've been striving for all of my life.

Writing, producing and directing, I must say, is incredibly satisfying and gratifying.

Tis so much to be a king, that he only is so by being so.

I like the idea of the objecthood of music being destabilized by process and things like improvisation. That's what empowers us; that's how we make each day new as players, as people.