My special situation was that I was the son and grandson of architects. And so I saw building. We were building the city, and that was exciting.

What a fool I would have been to let self-respect interfere with my happiness!

The most important message of a crucifix, to me anyway, was how unspeakably cruel supposedly sane human beings can be when under orders from a superior authority.

I was taught that the human brain was the crowning glory of evolution so far, but I think it's a very poor scheme for survival.

Much of the blame is the malarkey that artists have created to glorify war, which as we all know, is nonsense, and a good deal worse than that — romantic pictures of battle, and of the dead and men in uniform and all that. And I did not want to have that story told again.

Earthlings went on being friendly, when they should have been thinking instead.

I wasn't aware of Ku Klux Klan as I was aware of the widespread assumption that African-Americans were dumber than white people. I think my father believed that. I think everybody white did.