The spirit knows that its growth is the real aim of existence.

California is like an artificial limb the rest of the country doesn't really need. You can quote me on that.

Unexpected intrusions of beauty. This is what life is.

The more realistic you are the more you threaten the grounds of your own art.

In the greatest confusion there is still an open channel to the soul. It may be difficult to find because by midlife it is overgrown, and some of the wildest thickets that surround it grow out of what we describe as our education. But the channel is always there, and it is our business to keep it open, to have access to the deepest part of ourselves.

I'm afraid there's nothing we can do about the journalists; we can only hope that they will die off as the deerflies do towards the end of August.

De Tocqueville considered the impulse toward well-being as one of the strongest impulses of a democratic society. He can't be blamed for underestimating the destructive powers generated by this same impulse.