In marriage, the occasional catastrophic crisis is easier to manage than the daily routine.

Democracy -- rule by the people -- sounds like a fine thing; we should try it sometime in America.

There is no trajectory so pathetic as that of an artist in decline.

Men come and go, cities rise and fall, whole civilizations appear and disappear-the earth remains, slightly modified. The earth remains, and the heartbreaking beauty where there are no hearts to break....I sometimes choose to think, no doubt perversely, that man is a dream, thought an illusion, and only rock is real. Rock and sun.

Nobody seems more obsessed by diet than our antimaterialist, otherworldly, New Age, spiritual types. But if the material world is merely illusion, an honest guru should as content with Budweiser and bratwurst as with raw carrot juice, tofu, and seaweed slime.

The domination of nature leads to the domination of human nature.

Baseball serves as a good model for democracy in action: Every player is equally important and each has a chance to be a hero.