Roosters: The cry of the male chicken is the most barbaric yawp in all of nature.

Beware the writer who always encloses the word *reality* in quotation marks: He's trying to slip something over on you. Or into you.

Ah yes, the head is full of books. The hard part is to force them down through the bloodstream and out through the fingers.

Orthodoxy is a relaxation of the mind accompanied by a stiffening of the heart.

The ideal society can be described, quite simply, as that in which no man has the power of means to coerce others.

The author: an imaginary person who writes real books.

Poor Dimitri Shostakovich: In the Soviet Union, he was condemned as being too radical; in the West, for being too conservative. He could please no one but the musical public. He revenged himself on both by writing a short piece called 'March of the Soviet Police.'