it is through the ghost [writer] that the great gift of knowledge which the inarticulate have for the world can be made available.

Today, what most people live in, or with, is the less-than-nuclear family. Working fathers are absent from home during most of the day, the children are schooled outside it, and practically all women who work for money must go outside to earn their living.

As long as mixed grills and combination salads are popular, anthologies will undoubtedly continue in favor.

Mistrust must be acted on, and effective action by the ruled is not solitary and singular, but joint and repeated.

If there's nothing more powerful than an idea whose time has come, there is nothing more ubiquitously pervasive than an idea whose time won't go.

I admire people who are suited to the contemplative life. They can sit inside themselves like honey in a jar and just be. It's wonderful to have someone like that around, you always feel you can count on them. You can go away and come back, you can change your mind and your hairdo and your politics, and when you get through doing all these upsetting things, you look around and there they are, just the way they were, just being.

what society requires from art ... is that it function as an early warning system.