I would be the most content if my children grew up to be the kind of people who think decorating consists mostly of building enough bookshelves.

I will never understand people who think that the way to show their righteous opposition to sexual freedom is to write letters full of filthy words.

In books I have traveled, not only to other worlds, but into my own.

With reference to the younger generation..."If the experience of their exhausted, insomniac, dispirited elders makes them decide they'd prefer not to go straight from the classroom to the cubicle to the coffin, it doesn't mean they're lazy. It means they're sane."

I like to say that my mother had a very ordinary life. From the outside it didn't look like there was anything particularly special or wonderful about it, but when you watch somebody hold on to that life with both hands, it makes you think that life must be pretty damn good.

the separation of church and state grew out of a desire, not so much to protect government from religion, but to protect religion from government.

Figuring out who you are is the whole point of the human experience.