My notion of a great novel is something like a five-hundred-page shaggy-dog story, with only the punch line omitted.

But it is a writer's duty to write and speak and record the truth, always the truth, no matter whom may be offended.

Most of what we call the classics of world literature suggest artifacts in a wax museum. We have to hire and pay professors to get them read and talked about.

There comes a time in the life of us all when we must lay aside our books or put down our tools and leave our place of work and walk forth on the road to meet the enemy face-to-face. Once and for all and at last

Reply to Plato: I seen horses I seen cows I haint never yet seen horsiness nor that there bovinity neither.

Who needs astrology? The wise man gets by on fortune cookies.

One can imagine a sane, healthy, cheerful human society based on no more than the principles of common sense, as validated each day by work, play, and living experience. But this remains the most utopian and fantastic of ideals.