I have made more friends for American culture than the State Department. Certainly I have made fewer enemies, but that isn't very difficult.

The Greeks used to use the same stories, the same mythology, time after time, different authors. There was no premium placed upon an original story, and indeed, Shakespeare likewise. A lot of people wrote plays about great kings. They didn't expect a brand-new story. It was what that new author made of the old story. It is probably the same now. We disguise it by inventing what seem to be new stories, but they're basically the same story anyway.

Peace. It is a providence, and no great change; we are only what we always were, but naked now.

Everything we are is at every moment alive in us.

They tried to escape technology, to stay away from that and still have relationships with their fellow humans. Very difficult.

The American Dream is the largely unacknowledged screen in front of which all American writing plays itself out.

Nobody dast blame this man. For a salesman, there is no rock bottom to the life. He don't put a bolt to a nut, he don't tell you the law or give you medicine. He's a man way out there in the blue, riding on a smile and a shoeshine. And when they start not smiling back -- that's an earthquake. And then you get yourself a couple of spots on your hat, and you're finished. Nobody dast blame this man. A salesman is got to dream, boy. It comes with the territory.