Anytime you make a person into something other than himself, you make a monster.

A library should be like a pair of open arms.

Death is too much for men to bear, whereas women, who are practiced in bearing the deaths of men before their own and who are alsopracticed in bearing life, take death almost in stride. They go to meet death--that is, they attempt suicide--twice as often as men, though men are more "successful" because they use surer weapons, like guns.

When you have the goods, you don't need to dress up what you're writing.

Get rid of the guns. We had the Second Amendment that said you have the right to bear arms. I haven't seen the British really coming by my house looking for it. And besides, the right to bear arms is not an absolute right anyway, as New York's Sullivan Law proves. We talk about ourselves as a violent society, and some of that is right and some of it is claptrap. But I think if you took away the guns, and I mean really take away the guns, not what Congress is doing now, you would see that violent society diminish considerably.

A five-year old is in a pretty good position to assess who is beautiful and who is not. Removed from the confusions of sexuality, he or she can judge a face as a face.

Why, for example, do the great writers use anticipation instead of surprise? Because surprise is merely an instrument of the unusual, whereas anticipation of a consequence enlarges our understanding of what is happening.