And I'm convinced that knowing the names of things braces people up.

I am an American, Chicago born – Chicago, that somber city – and go at things as I have taught myself, free-style, and will make the record in my own way: first to knock, first admitted; sometimes an innocent knock, sometimes a not so innocent. But a man's character is his fate, says Heraclitus, and in the end there isn't any way to disguise the nature of the knocks by acoustical work on the door or gloving the knuckles.

Alternatives, and particularly desirable alternatives, grow only on imaginary trees.

The best and purest human beings, from the beginning of time, have understood that life is sacred.

We are funny creatures. We don't see the stars as they are, so why do we love them? They are not small gold objects, but endless fire.

Language is a spiritual mansion in which you live and nobody has the right to evict you.

It wasn't that he was specially ungenerous but that he put things off to give his generosity a longer and more significant route.