For politics is in its essence as Adams had said, the 'systematic organization of hatred': either you were organized or you were not.

Before you can write a novel you have to have a number of ideas that come together. One idea is not enough.

I can entertain the proposition that life is a metaphor for boxing--for one of those bouts that go on and on, round following round, jabs, missed punches, clinches, nothing determined, again the bell and again and you and your opponent so evenly matched it's impossible not to see that your opponent is you.... Life is like boxing in many unsettling respects. But boxing is only like boxing.

The innocence of such children doesn't answer our deepest questions about this vale of tears to which we are condemned, but it helps to dispel them. That is the secret to family life.

The act of sending a letter is an act of generosity, even if, in retrospect, it might seem reckless. Why regret one's generosity? Why regret one's impulsiveness, one's misjudgment of others? The inevitable discovery that someone is selling letters you'd written in trust is simply to discover an obvious human truth: there are those who don't cherish us as we'd cherished them, and had wished to be cherished by them.

We inhabit ourselves without valuing ourselves, unable to see that here, now, this very moment is sacred; but once it’s gone – its value is incontestable.

The great menace to the life of an industry is industrial self-complacency.