A rattlesnake loose in the living room tends to end all discussion of animal rights.

Over the years, he [Everett Dirksen] developed a style of infinitely subtle fustian, whose effect can still be remotely approximated by sipping twelve-year-old bourbon, straight, while reading Dickens aloud, in a sort of sepulchral purr.

The kiss is a wordless articulation of desire whose object lies in the future, and somewhat to the south.

When man sends colonies into space, he will be able to mount moveable, sun-reflecting mirrors to simulate rhythms of day and night and even the terrestial seasons...But he doubtless will follow the longstanding American habit of thinking that outer space should, as much as possible, resemble Southern California.

Everywhere you hang your hat is home. Home is the bright cave under the hat.

The Church became both more accessible and less imposing. It threw itself open to risk.

Handwriting is civilization's casual encephalogram.