Oh, I never look under the hood.

New York blends the gift of privacy with the excitement of participation; and better than most dense communities it succeeds in insulating the individual (if he wants it, and almost everybody wants or needs it) against all enormous and violent and wonderful events that are taking place every minute.

A despot doesn't fear eloquent writers preaching freedom- he fears a drunken poet who may crack a joke that will take hold.

Government is the thing. Law is the thing. Not brotherhood, not international cooperation, not security councils that can stop war only by waging it... Where does security lie, anyway - security against the thief, a bad man, the murderer? In brotherly love? Not at all. It lies in government.

His words span rivers and mountains, but his thoughts are still only six inches long.

I guess I remembered clearest of all the early mornings, when the lake was cool and motionless, remembered how the bedroom smelled of the lumber it was made of and of the wet woods whose scent entered through the screen.

People are, if anything, more touchy about being thought silly than they are about being thought unjust.