Is the Archbishop's blessing any more meaningful than the Politician's handshake? The come, they go, with bigger things than us on their minds.

One man alone can be pretty dumb sometimes, but for real bona fide stupidity, there ain't nothing can beat teamwork.

I would not sacrifice a single living mesquite tree for any book ever written. One square mile of living desert is worth a hundred 'great books' - and one brave deed is worth a thousand.

You can't study the darkness by flooding it with light.

The axiom of conditioned repetition, like the binomial theorem, is nothing but a piece of insolence.

John Updike: our greatest suburban chic-boutique man of letters. A smug and fatal complacency has stunted his growth beyond hope of surgical repair. Not enough passion in his collected works to generate steam in a beer can. Nevertheless, he is considered by some critics to be America's finest *living* author: Hold a chilled mirror to his lips and you will see, presently, a fine and dewy moisture condensing -- like a faery breath! -- upon the glass.

In the world of words, one of my best-loved tribes is the diatribe.