There is this thing called the university, and everybody goes there now. And there are these things called teachers who make students read this book with good ideas or that book with good ideas until that's where we get our ideas. We don't think them; we read them in books. I like Utopian talk, speculation about what our planet should be, anger about what our planet is. I think writers are the most important members of society, not just potentially but actually. Good writers must have and stand by their own ideas.

Traveling is like dancing lessons from God.

There is a strong feeling in the Middle West that the artist is not pulling his own weight no matter how hard he may work, that the other people are doing the real stuff.

Electronic communities build nothing. You wind up with nothing. We are dancing animals. How beautiful it is to get up and go out and do something. We are here on Earth to fart around. Don't let anybody tell you any different.

Plato says that the unexamined life is not worth living. But what if the examined life turns out to be a clunker as well?

You can't fight progress. The best you can do is ignore it, until it finally takes your livelihood and self-respect away.

The planet was being destroyed by manufacturing processes, and what was being manufactured was lousy, by and large.