The voice of the Constitution is the inescapably solemn self-consciousness of the people giving the law unto themselves.

The philosophical conservative is someone willing to pay the price of other people s suffering for his principles.

I've always felt, as a writer, that radicals are fascinating because they're relations, they have a place in the American family. They're the relatives everyone wishes would go away. They're the embarrassments to decorum and good taste.

Uncharged with invisible meaning, the visible is nothing, mere clay; and without visible circumstance, a territory, to connect to, our spirit is shapeless, nameless, and undefined.

Most people are quiet in the world, and live in it tentatively, as if it were not their own.

I can walk into a bookstore and hand over my credit card and they don't know who the hell I am. Maybe that says something about bookstore clerks.

The three most important documents a free society gives are a birth certificate, a passport, and a library card.