I'm a much worse guest than I am a host, and I'm not an awfully good host either. I really like being alone.

It is marvelous indeed to watch on television the rings of Saturn close; and to speculate on what we may yet find at galaxy's edge. But in the process, we have lost the human element; not to mention the high hope of those quaint days when flight would create one world. Instead of one world, we have star wars, and a future in which dumb dented human toys will drift mindlessly about the cosmos long after our small planet's dead.

Great critics do not explicate a text; they describe it and then report on what they have described, if the description itself is not the criticism.

To a man, ornithologists are tall, slender, and bearded so that they can stand motionless for hours, imitating kindly trees, as they watch for birds.

True wisdom is to know the extent of what you don't know quite as well as you know what you do know.

The whole point to American journalism is what ought to be true is true.

I’ve always said, ‘I have nothing to say, only to add.’ And it’s with each addition that the writing gets done. The first draft of anything is really just a track.