The greatest obstacle to discovery is not ignorance - it is the illusion of knowledge.

What preoccupies us, then, is not God as a fact of nature, but as a fabrication useful for a God-fearing society. God himself becomes not a power but an image.

[The Library of Congress] is a multimedia encyclopedia. These are the tentacles of a nation.

The world of crime is a last refuge of the authentic, uncorrupted, spontaneous event.

. . . the messiness of experience, that may be what we mean by life.

Reading is like the sex act - done privately, and often in bed.

I have observed that the world has suffered far less from ignorance than from pretensions to knowledge. It is not skeptics or explorers but fanatics and ideologues who menace decency and progress. No agnostic ever burned anyone at the stake or tortured a pagan, a heretic, or an unbeliever.