It's in the democratic citizen's nature to be like a leaf that doesn't believe in the tree it's part of.

The great thing about irony is that it splits things apart, gets up above them so we can see the flaws and hypocrisies and duplicates.

In reality, genuine epiphanies are extremely rare. In contemporary adult life maturation & acquiescence to reality are gradual processes. Modern usage usually deploys epiphany as a metaphor. It is usually only in dramatic representations, religious iconography, and the 'magical thinking' of children that insight is compressed to a sudden blinding flash.

The integrity of my sleep has been forever compromised, sir.

Good writing isn’t a science. It’s an art, and the horizon is infinite. You can always get better.

I think it's easy to stop smoking; it's just hard not to commit a felony after you stop.

America, as everybody knows, is a country of many contradictions, and a big contradiction for a long time has been between a very aggressive form of capitalism and consumerism against what might be called a kind of moral or civic impulse.