We didn't win the Cold War, we were just a big bank that bankrupted a smaller bank because we had an arms race that wiped the Russians out.

Writing books is the closest men ever come to childbearing.

A modern democracy is a tyranny whose borders are undefined; one discovers how far one can go only by traveling in a straight line until one is stopped.

The function of socialism is to raise suffering to a higher level.

Khomeini has offered us the opportunity to regain our frail religion ... faith in the power of words.

There was that law of life, so cruel and so just, that one must grow or else pay more for remaining the same.

Any war that requires the suspension of reason as a necessity for support is a bad war.

America is a hurricane, and the only people who do not hear the sound are those fortunate if incredibly stupid and smug White Protestants who live in the center, in the serene eye of the big wind.

I was thinking that surgeons had to be the happiest people on earth. To cut people up and get paid for it-that's happiness, I told myself.

Love asks us that we be a little braver than is comfortable, a little more generous, a little more flexible. It means living on the edge more than we care to.

Reaching consensus in a group is often confused with finding the right answer.

You got to go down a lot of wrong roads to find the right one.

Why do we want other people to like us, even if we don't really care about them all that much?

Eucharisteo—thanksgiving—always precedes the miracle.

Sometimes, my books start with a scene I see in my mind, such as a woman in a wedding dress running away from her wedding like in 'Embers of Love.' Sometimes, a book can start with a character.

For me, first of all, I love people, I love ideas.

Globalization has made copper and other minerals more valuable, and Ghana and Kenya have recently discovered mineral resources.

After love, no one is what they were before.

Religions vary in their degree of idiocy, but I reject them all.

I sat at a table where were rich food and wine in abundance, and obsequious attendance, but sincerity and truth were not; and I went away hungry from the inhospitable board.

The older you get, the more you find yourself looking for things you used to see and liked when you were younger.