No matter how wonderful a sentence is, if it doesn't add new and useful information, it should be removed.

The thing my father was proudest of was the Ayres clock at the intersection of Washington Street and Meridian. That made him so happy. Ayres complained because he wouldn't send them a bill. There was stuff my family had done there - particularly my father and grandfather - that was quite permanent and wonderful.

I hate it that Americans are taught to fear some books and some ideas as though they were diseases.

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

Only in books do we learn what’s really going on.

He was seemingly born not only with a gift for language, but with a particularly nasty clock which makes him go crazy every three years or so.

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.