If you are alive, there is hope for a better day and something good to happen. If there is nothing good left in the destiny of a person, he or she will die.

...we are all somehow dreadfully cracked about the head, and sadly need mending.

I finally had to go to the American Civil Liberties Union here in northern California to get my reply published to what I considered to be a hatchet job done by Stanley Crouch.

The premise of the Taker story is 'the world belongs to man'. … The premise of the Leaver story is 'man belongs to the world'.

In the sky there are always answers and explanations for everything: every pain, every suffering, joy and confusion.

[A]ny species that exempts itself from the rules of competition ends up destroying the community in order to support its own expansion.

Ethnic life in the United States has become a sort of contest like baseball in which the blacks are always the Chicago Cubs.

No one species shall make the life of the world its own.' … That's one expression of the law. Here's another: 'The world was not made for any one species.

No one says a novel has to be one thing. It can be anything it wants to be, a vaudeville show, the six o’clock news, the mumblings of wild men saddled by demons.

My childhood had gone by without my knowing, and it seemed as if my heart had frozen.

Some nights the sky wept stars that quickly floated and disappeared into the darkness before our wishes could meet them.

Music enlivens my soul and opens my heart to ever greater levels of bliss and joy.

But when reality was hopeless, fantasy became more and more necessary.

You have to become a ladder that other people climb up in their path to success. If you are not ready for that, then you are not ready to be a pastor.

Unions in wedlock are perverted by the victory of shameless passion that masters the female among men and beasts.

Only if we face up to our past can we regain our credibility. If we pretend that our trust is greater than it is, we will be like someone who tries to patch over a crack.

We are oftener deceived by being told some truth than no truth.

No matter who reigns, the merchant reigns.

An object never serves the same function as its image - or its name.

[ Hosting Saturday Night Live ] paved the way for Parks And Rec and The Grinder, the Comedy Central Roast, and that whole side of my career.

I don't know a better preparation for life than a love of poetry and a good digestion.