I would never betray a friend to serve a cause. Never reject a friend to help an institution. Great nations may fall in ruin before I would sell a friend to save them.

The one thing ... that is truly ugly is the climate of hate and intimidation, created by a noisy few, which makes the decent majority reluctant to air in public their views on anything controversial. ... Where all pretend to be thinking alike, it's likely that no one is thinking at all.

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

The love of a man for his wife, his child, of the land where he lives and works, is for me the real meaning of mystical experience.

Night and day the river flows. If time is the mind of space, the River is the soul of the desert. Brave boatmen come, they go, they die, the voyage flows on forever. We are all canyoneers. We are all passengers on this little mossy ship, this delicate dory sailing round the sun that humans call the earth. Joy, shipmates, joy.

All serious writers want the obvious rewards: fame, money, women, love -- and most of all, an audience!

This world may be only illusion -- but it's the only illusion we've got.