It takes a kind of shabby arrogance to survive in our time, and a fairly romantic nature to want to.

Juvenile delinquency serves many purposes, including that of providing sadistic adults with fantasies suited to their special tastes.

What we must decide is how we are valuable rather than how valuable we are.

The teenager seems to have replaced the Communist as the appropriate target for public controversy and foreboding.

Not only do most people accept violence if it is perpetuated by legitimate authority, they also regard violence against certain kinds of people as inherently legitimate, no matter who commits it.

Human life is a continuous thread which each of us spins to his own pattern, rich and complex in meaning. There are no natural knots in it. Yet knots form, nearly always in adolescence.

Those who love the young best stay young longer.

No American is prepared to attend his own funeral without the services of highly skilled cosmeticians. Part of the American dream, after all, is to live long and die young.

Canadians are more polite when they are being rude than Americans are when they are being friendly.

All weakness tends to corrupt, and impotence corrupts absolutely.

If a people have no word for something, either it does not matter to them or it matters too much to talk about.

That's your solution? Have a cookie?

You show true friends the ugly--and trust them enough to turn it into something beautiful.

Vanity might be a "sin" according to some lights, but he thought in measured doses it was one of life's allowable simple pleasures. It helped everyone get through their days.

Perfectionism is searching for faults to justify low self-esteem. It is a guaranteed failure and fantasy.

I never even went to high school because I went straight from middle school into the music business. I don't really know what it is supposed to be like.

The depiction of the exterior as opposed [to] what you're feeling inside is always so different that it's impossible to know what is right.

I was not able to stop or slow down the Vietnam War.

Up through and including Lincoln, American politicians nursed a fantasy of repatriating blacks to Africa.

Outside of traffic, there is nothing that has held this country back as much as committees.

The horses are all characters, all personalities. Some you get along with, some you don't, some might take a bit longer.