The canary bird in the coal mine theory of the arts: artists should be treasured as alarm systems.

Big, undreamed-of things — the people on the edge see them first.

Talent is extremely common. What is rare is the willingness to endure the life of the writer.

It's all like an ocean!" cried Dostoevski. I say it's all like cellophane.

What Franklin Roosevelt did, which really offended them, was he strengthened the labor unions - made it possible for them to strike. The oligarchs were furious because the working class was not supposed to have any power at all.

The darkest secret of this country, I am afraid, is that too many of its citizens imagine that they belong to a much higher civilization somewhere else. That higher civilization doesn’t have to be another country. It can be the past instead—the United States as it was before it was spoiled by immigrants and the enfranchisement of the blacks. This state of mind allows too many of us to lie and cheat and steal from the rest of us, to sell us junk and addictive poisons and corrupting entertainments. What are the rest of us, after all, but sub-human aborigines?

Let there be nothing harmonious about our children's playthings, lest they grow up expecting peace and order, and be eaten alive.