A society that feels itself too poor to afford the preservation of wilderness is not worthy of the name civilization.

Life without music would be an intolerable insult.

The world is full of burled and gnarly knobs on which you can hang a metaphysical system. If you must.

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

Reincarnation? There is such a thing. What could be more Mozartian than the Nutcracker Suite?

it will be objected that a constantly increasing population makes resistance and conservation a hopeless battle. this is true. unless a way is found to stabilize the nation's population, the parks can not be saved. or anything else worth a damn. wilderness preservation, like a hundred other good causes, will be forgotten under the overwhelming pressure of a struggle for mere survival and sanity in a completely urbanized, completely industrialized, ever more crowded environment. for my own part i would rather take my chances in a thermonuclear war than live in such a world.

The critics say that Shostakovich's Fourth Symphony has no form. They are wrong; it has the form of Shostakovich's Fourth Symphony.