While I'm working on a book, I rarely read anything more than The New York Times. Which may have the long-term effect of flattening my style.

The private terror of the liberal spirit is invariably suicide, not murder.

When the time comes, they won't ask what kind of a Jew you are.

The essence of spirit ... was to choose the thing which did not better one's position but made it more perilous. That was why the world he knew was poor, for it insisted morality and caution were identical.

So the blind will lead the blind, and the deaf shout warnings to one another until their voices are lost.

I don't want to retire. I'm not that good at crossword puzzles

The century would seek to dominate nature as it had never been dominated, would attack the idea of war, poverty and natural catastrophe as never before. The century would create death, devastation and pollution as never before. Yet the century was now attached to the idea that man must take his conception of life out to the stars.