As human beings, we are always torn between individual freedom and the ability of choose our actions, and the need for at least enough social structure so that anarchy, chaos, and warlordery - or the war of all against all - can be avoided.

Stick a shovel into the ground almost anywhere and some horrible thing or other will come to light. Good for trade, we thrive on bones; without them there'd be no stories.

In theory I can do almost anything; certainly I have been told how. In practice I do as little as possible. I pretend to myself that I would be quite happy in a hermit's cave, living on gruel, if someone else would make the gruel. Gruel, like so many other things, is beyond me.

Popular art is the dream of society; it does not examine itself.

The only way you can write the truth is to assume that what you set down will never be read.

But the adjectives change,” said Jimmy. “Nothing’s worse than last year’s adjectives.

I didn't much like it, this grudge-holding against the past.