In social institutions, the whole is always less than the sum of its parts. There will never be a state as good as its people, or a church worthy of its congregation, or a university equal to its faculty and students.

There has never been an 'original' sin: each is quite banal.

I always wanted to be a cowboy. But alas! I was burdened early with certain inescapable obligations to world literature.

The best American writers have come from the hinterlands -- Mark Twain, Theodore Dreiser, Jack London, Hemingway, Faulkner, Wolfe, Steinbeck. Most of them never even went to college.

If America could be, once again, a nation of self-reliant farmers, craftsmen, hunters, ranchers, and artists, then the rich would have little power to dominate others. Neither to serve nor to rule: That was the American dream.

Life imitates art -- but badly.

Suicide: Don't knock it if you ain't tried it.