To be alive is to take risks; to be always safe and secure is death.

My notion of a great novel is something like a five-hundred-page shaggy-dog story, with only the punch line omitted.

The best argument for Christianity is the Gregorian chant. Listening to that music, one can believe anything -- while the music lasts.

My loyalties will not be bound by national borders, or confined in time by one nation's history, or limited in the spiritual dimension by one language and culture. I pledge my allegiance to the damned human race, and my everlasting love to the green hills of Earth, and my intimations of glory to the singing stars, to the very end of space and time.

The Proustian aquarium: grotesque and gorgeous fish drifting with languid fins through a subaqueous medium of pale violet polluted ink.

If the end does not justify the means - what can?

Among politicians and businessmen, *Pragmatism* is the current term for 'To hell with our children.'