Don't worry about your father. He's a perfectly contented, self-sufficient zombie.

Two radical ideas have been introduced into human thought. One of them is that energy and matter are pretty much the same sort of stuff. That's Einstein. The other is that revenge is a bad idea. Revenge is an enormously popular idea but, of course, Jesus came along with the radical idea of forgiveness. If you're insulted, you have to square accounts. So this invention by Jesus is as radical as Einstein's.

Perhaps I am the turtle, able to live simply anywhere, even underwater for short periods, with my home on my back.

Take it moment by moment, and you will find that we are all, as I’ve said before, bugs in amber.

Take it from somebody who has been around for a million years: When you get right down to it, food is practically the whole story every time.

I've got news for Mr. Santayana: we're doomed to repeat the past no matter what. That's what it is to be alive.

Terry Kitchen asked me one time why, since I had so few gifts as a husband and father, I had gotten married. And I heard myself say: "That's the way the post-war movie goes.