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)

I have thought that men and women should never come together except in bed. There is the only place where their natural hatred of each other is not so apparent.

Let's say that when I was a little baby, and all my bones soft and malleable, I was put in a small Episcopal cruciform box and so took my shape. Then, when I broke out of the box, the way a baby chick escapes an egg, is it strange that I had the shape of a cross? Have you ever noticed that chickens are roughly egg-shaped?

You are not a man anymore. You are a soldier. Your comfort is of no importance and your life isn't of much importance. Most of your orders will be unpleasant, but that's not your business. They should've trained you for this, and not for flower-strewn streets. They should have built your soul with truth, not led along with lies.

The American girl makes a servant of her husband and then finds him contemptible for being a servant

Just set one day's work in front of the last day's work. That's the way it comes out. And that's the only way it does.

Literature is as old as speech. It grew out of a human need for it, and it has not changed except to become more needed