In order to pay it's got to be a pretty big winner. But if it's a big hit from a financial standpoint, then next year you've got a very tough comparison.

Salinger is a master of the memorable detail, the seemingly random gesture, the debris of mundane daily operations, the stuff that is left out of any analysis.

It is possible that our race may be an accident, in a meaningless universe, living its brief life uncared for, on this dark, cooling star

There is that in the soul of man which must respond to the highest in virtue. It may not respond at once. Human nature can easily be over-faced by examples too remote and austere. Moreover, human nature can easily deny God because the whole race has long been in rebellion against Him. Yet there is that in human nature which calls out to the supreme examples of virtue: owns, as it were, the intention of God who made it, and feels the unmistakable homesickness of the soul.

In the electronic age, books, words and reading are not likely to remain sufficiently authoritative and central to knowledge to justify literature.

When it is not necessary to amend the Constitution, it is necessary not to amend the Constitution.

The magnificence of mountains, the serenity of nature-nothing is safe from the idiot marks of man's passing.