A woman, as much as a man, is responsible by the age of forty for the character of her face. But women, obeying the biological imperative, strive harder to preserve a youthful appearance (the reproductive look) and lose it sooner.

The more fantastic an ideology or theology, the more fanatic its adherents.

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.

A house built on greed cannot long endure.

There comes a point, in literary objectivity, when the author's self- effacement is hard to distinguish from moral cowardice.

You cannot reshape human nature without mutilating human beings.

Congress is always willing to appropriate money for more and bigger paved roads, anywhere -- particularly if they form loops.