One can live with the thought of one's own death. It is the thought of the death of the words and books that is terrifying for that is the deeper extinction.

As they marched, the crowds lining the route broke into applause, a sweet and deeply felt spontaneous pattering that was a sort of communal embrace. Welcome home.

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.

The television anchorman Dan Rather turns up in rag-top native drag in Afghanistan, the surrogate of our culture with his camera crew, intrepid as Sir Richard Burton sneaking into Mecca.

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

Not to forgive is to be imprisoned by the past, by old grievances that do not permit life to proceed with new business.

The busybodies have begun to infect American society with a nasty intolerance - a zeal to police the private lives of others and hammer them into standard forms - A Nation of Finger Pointers.