If the liberal arts do nothing else they provide engaging metaphors for the thinking they displace.

I saw my earlier selves as different people, acquaintances I had outgrown. I wondered how I could ever have been some of them.

Life is full of doors that don't open when you knock, equally spaced amid those that open when you don't want them to.

Don't wake me for the end of the world unless it has very good special effects.

The death of an illusion tends to disconcert.

When inspiration is silent reason tires quickly.

That's life: trust and you're betrayed; don't trust and you betray yourself.

There's really nothing quite like someone's wanting you dead to make you want to go on living.

If a building is falling on you, you don't concern yourself with the horn of an approaching car. You deal with the most immediate peril first. That's survival.

To paraphrase Oedipus, Hamlet, Lear, and all those guys, "I wish I had known this some time ago.

Nothing we did in those days has caused a change." "Because of what we did, things remained as they were, rather than getting worse," I told him.

in principle and reality, libraries are life-enhancing palaces of wonder

You have to tell a story before you can sell a story.

I'm a believer in that you can't really choose your audience, your audience chooses you.

Everyone is a son or daughter of god.

I'm too old to be forced.

I have produced all kinds of music because I love all kinds of music.

There are children who are working in textile businesses in Asia who would be prostitutes on the streets if they did not have those jobs

Nothing is sadder than love left unheard.

Few look for truth; many prowl about for a reputation of profundity by arrogantly challenging whichever arguments are the best.

You think I regret saving your life?