No birdcall is the musical equal of a clarinet blown with panache.

In order to really enjoy a dog, one doesn't merely try to train him to be semi-human. The point of it is to open oneself to the possibility of becoming partly a dog.

There aren't many irritations to match the condescension which a woman metes out to a man who she believes has loved her vainly for the past umpteen years.

Men often compete with one another until the day they die. Comradeship consists of rubbing shoulders jocularly with a competitor.

True solitude is a din of birdsong, seething leaves, whirling colors, or a clamor of tracks in the snow.

The question of whether it's God's green earth is not at center stage, except in the sense that if so, one is reminded with some regularity that He may be dying.

Animals are stylized characters in a kind of old saga - stylized because even the most acute of them have little leeway as they play out their parts.

Silence is exhilarating at first - as noise is - but there is a sweetness to silence outlasting exhilaration, akin to the sweetness of listening and the velvet of sleep.

Men greet each other with a sock on the arm, women with a hug, and the hug wears better in the long run.

If two people are in love they can sleep on the blade of a knife.

Many people have believed that they were Chosen, but none more baldly than the Texans.

Sometimes the only reason for us to be somewhere else is to see things from a different perspective.

Losing someone you love is harder. One minute they're there, the next they're gone. There were times I wished they would rise up from the dead.

Patience has all the time it needs.

Gratitude is one of the strongest pillars of a happy life.

The most tragic thing in the world is a man of genius who is not a man of honor.

Having to work hard never had any real appeal for me, and that may have some connection with me being in the movies.

I saw a story in the Los Angeles Times that 40 percent of the viewers are men. It didn't really surprise me.

Dawn tinted the darkness like water ink.

I need no traffic from Google. I don't care if I get one traffic referral from Google, or Bing, or Yahoo, or any of these others. It's always been that way.

Christian theology is the grandmother of Bolshevism.