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.

Come September, children return to school, grownups to work, and the brain to the head.

My guess [is] . . . that the great majority of Americans are saying they favor gun control when they really mean gun banishment. . . . I think the country has long been ready to restrict the use of guns, except for hunting rifles and shotguns, and now I think we're prepared to get rid of the damned things entirely - the handguns, the semis and the automatics.

Blame is especially useful in situations in which there is no apparent villain-those moments that prove, despite our advancement of learning, how susceptible we are to high winds and wet roads.

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.

One senses, in all autobiography, a straining toward perfection, perfection of a kind that connects the individual with a cosmic pattern which, because it is perfect in itself, verifies that individuals own potential perfection.

Just because the person who criticizes you is an idiot doesn't make him wrong.