Music, not being made up of objects nor referring to objects, is intangible and ineffable; it can only be as it were inhaled by the spirit: the rest is silence.

Of course, clothing fashions have always been impractical, except in Tahiti.

If it were possible to talk to the unborn, one could never explain to them how it feels to be alive, for life is washed in the speechless real.

The danger that may really threaten (crime fiction) is that soon there will be more writers than readers

Political correctness does not legislate tolerance; it only organizes hatred.

Teaching is not a lost art, but the regard for it is a lost tradition.

In teaching you cannot see the fruit of a day's work. It is invisible and remains so, maybe for twenty years.

The truth is, when all is said and done, one does not teach a subject, one teaches a student how to learn it.

If civilization has risen from the Stone Age, it can rise again from the Wastepaper Age.

Whoever wants to know the heart and mind of America had better learn baseball, the rules and realities of the game - and do it by watching first some high school or small-town teams.

Universities incline wits to sophistry and affectation.

As Moses threw whatever in his hand on the ground, so does hand should do what it can to earn miracles.

as long as we are being remembered, we remain alive

I want to swim in both directions at once. Desire success, court failure.

So the mathematician and the artist are companioned in the same dark, and do obeisance to the same gods.

In my view, the holy is not based so much on the physical environment, but on the experience and perceptions of it.

I swing big, with everything I've got. I hit big or I miss big. I like to live as big as I can.

And it was, it was not beating George Bush, believe it or not, the bottom line as far as I was concerned was introducing to the public who Gerry Ferraro was.

We live and learn from our mistakes, the deepest cuts are healed by faith.

If the timing's right and the gods are with you, something special happens.

Style is that which indicates how the writer takes himself and what he is saying. It is the mind skating circles around itself as it moves forward.