Language is like soil. However rich, it is subject to erosion, and its fertility is constantly threatened by uses that exhaust itsvitality. It needs constant re-invigoration if it is not to become arid and sterile.

Democracy, like any non-coercive relationship, rests on a shared understanding of limits.

People are more violently opposed to fur than leather because it's safer to harass rich women than motorcycle gangs. People are very inclined to set moral standards for others.

The Republicans’ plan is that if they can’t buy the 2012 election they will steal it.

The torment of human frustration, whatever its immediate cause, is the knowledge that the self is in prison, its vital force and "mangled mind" leaking away in lonely, wasteful self-conflict.

The test of literature is, I suppose, whether we ourselves live more intensely for the reading of it.

[On newspapers:] A first draft of history.