The mere attempt to examine my own confusion would consume volumes.

The goal is the same: life itself; and the price is the same; life itself.

You must be in tune with the times and prepared to break with tradition.

The artist's task is not to alter the world as the eye sees it into a world of aesthetic reality, but to perceive the aesthetic reality within the actual reality. (On photographs by Helen Levitt)

Isn’t every human being both a scientist and an artist; and in writing of human experience, isn’t there a good deal to be said for recognizing that fact and for using both methods?

Some people get where they hope to in this world. Most of us don't.

You've got to bear it in mind that nobody that ever lived is specially privileged; the axe can fall at any moment, on any neck, without any warning or any regard for justice.

I'm very anxious not to fall into archaism or 'literary' diction. I want my vocabulary to have a very large range, but the words must be alive.

A mother never realizes that her children are no longer children.

The camera seems to me, next to unassisted and weaponless consciousness, the central instrument of our time.

Just spunk won't be enough; you've got to have gumption.

Some situations are just like bad dreams, they're only unbearable while we're giving them our full attention.

As soon as you stop wanting something you get it. I've found that to be absolutely axiomatic.

Don't believe everything you hear - even in your own mind.

Slate is not a political magazine but a lot of what it does is politics.

People have become inappropriate. People have pushed too far. People have climbed one too many fences. I'm just tired of it.

Fake feeling good.... You're going to have to learn to fake cheerfulness. Believe it or not, eventually that effort will pay off: you'll actually start feeling happier.

A life without criticism is not worth living.

New York is a lot more fun than L.A.

It is many times with a fraudulent Design that men stick their corrupt Doctrine with the Cloves of other mens Wit.

Genetic engineers don't make new genes, they rearrange existing ones.