One of the main effects of war, after all, is that people are discouraged from being characters.

Educating a beautiful woman is like pouring honey into a fine Swiss watch: everything stops.

I was taught in the sixth grade that we had a standing army of just over a hundred thousand men and that the generals had nothing to say about what was done in Washington. I was taught to be proud of that and to pity Europe for having more than a million men under arms and spending all their money on airplanes and tanks. I simply never unlearned junior civics. I still believe in it. I got a very good grade.

There are plenty of good reasons for fighting, I said, but no good reason ever to hate without reservation, to imagine that God Almighty Himself hates with you, too.

In those days great teachers at Shortridge [High School] were celebrities. I would look up to them.

On the day they dropped the bomb Frank had a tablespoon and a Mason jar. What he was doing was spooning different kinds of bugs into the jar and making them fight....I can remember other bug fights we staged later on...They won't fight unless you keep shaking the jar.

One might be led to suspect that there were all sorts of things going on in the Universe which he or she did not thoroughly understand.