The image-managers encourage the individual to fashion himself into a smooth coin, negotiable in any market.

Self pity is easily the most destructive of the non-pharmaceutical narcotics; it is addictive, gives momentary pleasure and separates the victim from reality.

Talking, talking. Spinning a web of words, pale walls of dreams, between myself and all I see.

We read five words on the first page of a really good novel and we begin to forget that we are reading printed words on a page; we begin to see images.

What art ought to do is tell stories which are moment-by-moment wonderful, which are true to human experience, and which in no way explain human experience.

The citizen can bring our political and governmental institutions back to life, make them responsive and accountable, and keep them honest. No one else can.

Fiction does not spring into the world fully grown, like Athena. It is the process of writing and rewriting that makes a fiction original, if not profound.

Art, of course, is a way of thinking, a way of mining reality.

As a rule of thumb I say, if Socrates, Jesus and Tolstoy wouldn't do it, don't.

When people are serving, life is no longer meaningless.

One of the many interesting challenges nature presents us is its apparent disinterest in maintaining the order humans crave.

Don’t be afraid of being yourself, but be afraid of being somebody else.

An obscure flesh-and-blood Gascon, forgotten by History, transformed into a legendary giant by the novelist's genius

...the habit of despair is worse than despair itself.

Social Security Works! puts expanding Social Security front and center on the national agenda, where it belongs. Everyone who has a stake in the debate should read this important book.

One who believes, as I do, that the free intellect is the chief engine of human progress, cannot but be fundamentally opposed to Bolshevism, as much as to the Church of Rome.

In England they need a king, in Spain they need a king, in France there is no more king. But they consider the president as if he was a king.

Their throats were bare for God.

From the minute I heard music I knew why I was born.

Love is all I can possess and no one can deprive me of it. Kahlil Gibran (Visions of the Prophet)

Americans of all ages are earning less than they did two decades ago when adjusted for inflation. Yet they’re paying more in taxes.