For what can be imagined more beautiful than the sight of a perfectly just city rejoicing in justice alone.

To be mad is to feel with excruciating intensity the sadness and joy of a time which has not arrived or has already been.

Give the money directly to people who work hard. Instead of taking the money from the business and then filtering it through the horror of government programs, which is essentially giving it to social workers who live in Bethesda so they can drive their minivans and vote Democratic. Give them the money, so that they go and talk to the worker who is washing dishes, and they say, "Well, we want to help you, you see." And it would be better to help them by taking the money from that minivan-driving social worker and giving it directly to the guy who is really working hard by washing dishes.

I have always thought limousines make me dreadfully uncomfortable, just the way that suits do. When I wear a suit, I feel like ants and termites are crawling all over my body. It's really, really uncomfortable. People put themselves in a kind of prison. It's like the world of the embassies.

Words were all he knew; they possessed and overwhelmed him, as if they were a thousand white cats with whom he shared a one-room apartment.

They gave themselves up to the stars the way swimmers can surrender to the waves, and the stars took them without resistance.

As it somehow always manages before the winter solstice, but never after, the early darkness was cheerful and promising, even for those who had nothing.