We can never leave loneliness behind completely - it is part of what forms us.

As lovers of truth, we want to be close to it. Sometimes - evil thought, evil temptation - we want to be close to it by misleading others about its presence.

I'm pretty sure my dog, Pip, gets lonely when there is no one to be with him. But we humans can end up with a gnawing worry about that separation possibly becoming a permanent condition.

Of course, each of us has to write our own book, live our own life.

I worry that we don't currently have a democracy in the United States. Instead we have what [political philosopher] Sheldon Wolin has recently labeled a sort of inverted totalitarianism.

I look back on some of my early reviews of others, and realize to my chagrin that I've been as guilty as anybody else on that front.

It is an admonition to myself when I am reading other people's books. Writing a book is very difficult to do, even a bad one. I try to remember that when reading someone else's work.

None of us is perfect, but the point of our writing is to try to become better, to learn something that we may not have already realized, about ourselves, about the world we inhabit.

At some point just about all of us experience loneliness. In a sense, it is what it means to be a sentient animal, to have an experience of separation from others.

No subject is closer to my heart than the family . . . The moral foundation of our country is in danger of crumbling as families break up and parents neglect their responsibilities.

In the presence of nature, a wild delight runs through the man, in spite of real sorrows. Nature says, -- he is my creature, and maugre all his impertinent griefs, he shall be glad with me

Friends, in my experience, are like ladies' fashions. They come and go with the seasons, and are rarely of such stout stuff as bears repeated wearing.

Atheism is the result of ignorance and pride; of strong sense and feeble reasons; of good eating and ill-living. It is the plague of society, the corrupter of manners, and the underminer of property.

When he inches into me, I feel the pain, but I also feel the invisible chains around my wrists break and shatter.

It was a strike against me that I didn't wear baggy jeans and jerseys and that I never hustled, never sold drugs.

This is the method of genius, to ripen fruit for the crowd by those rays of whose heat they complain.

If the budget that you're talking about isn't a good one, then it's better not to pass a budget. Most people in the country will never notice whether we pass a budget resolution or not.

I think the notion of retirement is just a dreadful, dreadful idea and I hope I never have to do that.

I am not someone who believes to doing a film just because it is off beat.