Imagination is not something apart and hermetic, not a way of leaving reality behind; it is a way of engaging reality.

The knowledge that makes us cherish innocence makes innocence unattainable.

One great flaw in the reforming passion is that in its eagerness to remedy social wrongs it tends to neglect, certainly to undervalue, the experience of those whose lives it wishes to improve.

Taste speaks through a turn of phrase, a curl of the lip, a shrug of the shoulder: it makes an atmosphere.

Comedy speaks for civilization; farce bears an ill-concealed, sometimes unconcealed animus against civilization. Often against civility too.

Good readers make much out of little.

The cruelest thing anyone can do to Portnoy's Complaint is to read it twice.

The message of guidance that neither politics nor philosophy nor religion now seems able to provide, we look for in modern literature.

No one has ever seen the self. It has no visible shape, nor does it occupy measurable space. It is an abstraction, like other abstractions equally elusive: the individual, the mind, the society

He claimed his modest share of the general foolishness of the human race.

Send message to the future by writing it today!

I have never regarded politics as the arena of morals. It is the arena of interests.

Rick Santorum beat Mitt Romney in three states on Tuesday. Got a huge amount of fundraising. That's the good news for Rick Santorum. The bad news: people are now Googling 'Santorum.'

The time flies. The time flies feed on rotting clocks.

Pan is dead! great Pan is dead! Pan, Pan is dead!

You can develop good judgment as you do the muscles of the body — by judicious, daily exercise.

That old berk," muttered Aberforth, taking another swig of mead. "Thought the sun shone out of my brother's every orifice, he did.

When I reflect upon my blessings during my very nice lifetime, I am inspired to make sure that I spend the balance of the days of my existence in a productive way.

It is almost always a mistake to mention Abraham Lincoln. He always steals the show.

I never met a writer who wasn't lazy.