I like a lot of talk in a book and I don't like to have nobody tell me what the guy that's talking looks like. I want to figure out what he looks like from the way he talks.

How can I teach my boys the value and beauty of language and thus communication when the President himself reads westerns exclusively and cannot put together a simple English sentence? (John Steinbeck, in a private letter written during the Eisenhower administration)

This I would fight for: the freedom of the mind to take any direction it wishes, undirected.

for how can you remember the feel of pleasure or pain or choking emotion? You can remember only that you had them.

We can shoot rockets into space but we can't cure anger or discontent.

Well, I remember this girl. I am not whole without her. I am not alive without her. When she was with me I was more alive than I have ever been, and not only when she was pleasant either. Even when we were fighting I was whole.

It’s a hard thing to leave any deeply routine life, even if you hate it.