bergeron's epitaph for the planet, i remember, which he said should be carved in big letters in a wall of the grand canyon for the flying-saucer people to find was this: WE COULD HAVE SAVED IT, BUT WE WERE TOO DOGGONE CHEAP. only he didn't say "doggone.

Your eloquence should be the servant of the ideas in your head. Your rule might be this: If a sentence, no matter how excellent, does not illuminate your subject in some new and useful way, scratch it out.

... humanity deserved to die horribly, since it had behaved so cruelly and wastefully on a planet so sweet.

A sum of money is a leading character in this tale about people, just as a sum of honey might properly be a leading character in a tale about bees.

The youngest child in any family is always a jokemaker, because a joke is the only way he can enter into an adult conversation.

Humor is a way of holding off how awful life can be, to protect yourself.

Human beings are chimpanzees who get crazy drunk on power. By saying that our leaders are power-drunk chimpanzees, am I in danger of wrecking the morale of our soldiers fighting and dying in the Middle East? Their morale, like so many bodies, is already shot to pieces. They are being treated, as I never was, like toys a rich kid got for Christmas.