Why do I write? I write to entertain my friends and to exasperate our enemies. To unfold the folded lie, to record to truth of our time, and, of course, to promote esthetic bliss.

The "terror" of the French Revolution lasted for ten years. The terror that preceded and led to it lasted for a thousand years.

Our modern industrial economy takes a mountain covered with trees, lakes, running streams and transforms it into a mountain of junk, garbage, slime pits, and debris.

Jane Austen: Getting into her books is like getting in bed with a cadaver. Something vital is lacking; namely, life.

The knowledge that refuge is available, when and if needed, makes the silent inferno of the desert more easily bearable. Mountains complement desert as desert complements city, as wilderness complements and completes civilization.

An economic system which can only expand or expire must be false to all that is human.

The artist's job? To be a miracle worker: make the blind see, the dull feel, the dead to live.