The death penalty would be even more effective, as a deterrent, if we executed a few innocent people more often.

So I write mainly for the fun of it, the hell of it, the duty of it. I enjoy writing and will probably be a scribbler on my dying day, sprawled on some stony trail halfway between two dry waterholes.

I'm happy to respect authority when it's genuine authority, based on moral or intellectual or even technical superiority. I'm eager to follow a hero if we can find one. But I tend to resist or evade any kind of authority based merely on the power to coerce. Government, for example. The Army tried to train us to salute the uniform, not the man. Failed. I will salute the man, maybe, if I think he's worthy of it, but I don't salute uniforms anymore.

The most common form of terrorism in the U.S.A. is that carried on by bulldozers and chain saws.

There are only two kinds of books -- good books and the others. The good are winnowed from the bad through the democracy of time.

I must confess that I know nothing whatsoever about true underlying reality, never having met any.

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