"The tradition of the new." Yesterday's avant-gard-experiment is today's chic and tomorrow's cliche.

A university's essential character is that of being a center of free inquiry and criticism - a thing not to be sacrificed for anything else.

If for every error and every act of incompetence one can substitute an act of treason, many points of fascinating interpretation are open to the paranoid imagination.

Intellectualism, though by no means confined to doubters, is often the sole piety of the skeptic.

If there is anything more dangerous to the life of the mind than having no independent commitment to ideas, it is having an excess of commitment to some special and constricting idea.

We are all sufferers from history, but the paranoid is a double sufferer, since he is afflicted not only by the real world, with the rest of us, but by his fantasies as well.

To the reactionary ear every whispered criticism of the elite classes has always sounded like the opening shot of an uprising.

Intellect is resented as a form of power or privilege.

As with the pursuit of happiness, the pursuit of truth is itself gratifying whereas the consummation often turns out to be elusive.

The nation seems to slouch onward into its uncertain future like some huge inarticulate beast, too much attainted by wounds and ailments to be robust, but too strong and resourceful to succumb.

The role of third parties is to sting like a bee, then die.

A great artist is conscious of the talent and the power he possesses, otherwise he would not see his faults, and so would not be able to improve.

When I found God forgiveness found me.

I feel like I was writing as I was learning to talk. Writing was always a go-to form of communication. And I knew I could sing from being in tune with the radio.

A truth that's told with bad intent beats all the lies you can invent.

My wife and I got engaged in New Hampshire at this lake house that her family's had forever, and it's on Lake Winnipesaukee. And so we went there every summer as we were dating.

I know without needing to hear the voice of the Creator that the stars trace out in space the orbits which His hand has drawn.

when I talk about a writing life, I'm talking about a life in which writing is the dominant response to living.

I may have been a Wayward, but my way was full of people who loved me. They were the only way I knew

I don't think I've gotten any smarter, but your reflexes slow down before you do something stupid when you're older.

After winning the Derby aged just 18-Why all the fuss? After all, the Derby is just another race.