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

The duty of a patriot is to protect his country from its government.

Be a half-assed crusader, a part-time fanatic. Don't worry to much about the fate of the world. Saving the world is only a hobby. Get out there and enjoy the world, your girlfriend, your boyfriend, husbands wives; climb mountains, run rivers, get drunk, do whatever you want to do while you can, before it's too late.

The ever-rising cost of living: Someday soon, the corporate technicians will be locking meters on our noses and charging us a royalty on the air we breathe.

I find more and more, as I grow older, that I prefer women to men, children to adults, animals to humans.... And rocks to living things? No, I'm not that old yet.

The best American writers have come from the hinterlands -- Mark Twain, Theodore Dreiser, Jack London, Hemingway, Faulkner, Wolfe, Steinbeck. Most of them never even went to college.

Platitude: a statement that denies by implication what it explicitly affirms.