How long does it take to write a good book? All of the years that you've lived.
There is science, logic, reason; there is thought verified by experience. And then there is California.
There is no trajectory so pathetic as that of an artist in decline.
Literature, like anything else, can become a wearisome business if you make a lifetime specialty of it. A healthy, wholesome man would no more spend his entire life reading great books than he would packing cookies for Nabisco.
War? The one war I'd be happy to join is the war against officers.
The most common form of terrorism in the U.S.A. is that carried on by bulldozers and chainsaws. It is not enough to understand the natural world; the point is to defend and preserve it. Sentiment without action is the ruin of the soul.