When I weed, I like to get off into my own head. For one thing, my wife plants and I have trouble telling which plants are weeds and which are my favorite plants. So I tend to hop around and grab the weeds that I know are weeds. So I don't weed all that linearly. I tend to weed haphazardly.

Perhaps the truth is that heavy literature blooms in extremes of temperature.

Being president of too many well-meaning organizations put my father into an early grave. The lesson in this was not lost on me.

Vincent van Gogh's mother painted all of his best things. The famous mailed decapitated ear was a figment of the public relations firm engaged by Van Gogh's dealer.

Anyone who undertakes the literary grind had better like playing around with words.

Obama's the most thoughtful-sounding president I can remember. He seems to be saying what he wants to say, and that is a great relief. He always sounds like he's thinking about what he's saying while he's saying it, and that's a rare thing in politicians.

It's my belief that sanity lies in realizing that reality is not exactly what we had in mind.