Poetry, the best of it, is lunar and is concerned with the essential insanities. Journalism is solar (there are numerous newspapers named The Sun, none called The Moon) and is devoted to the inessential.

To the extent that this world surrenders its richness and diversity, it surrenders its poetry; to the extent that it relinquishes its capacity to surprise, it relinquishes its music; to the extent that it loses its ability to tolerate ridiculous and even dangerous exceptions, it loses its grace.

Hardly a pure science, history is closer to animal husbandry than it is to mathematics in that it involves selective breeding. The principal difference between the husbandryman and the historian is that the former breeds sheep or cows or such and the latter breeds (assumed) facts. The husbandryman uses his skills to enrich the future, the historian uses his to enrich the past. Both are usually up to their ankles in bullshit.

As expected, you get his machine. Someday, even the "call of nature" will be answered by a machine.

The unhappy person resents it when you try to cheer him up, because that means he has to stop dwelling on himself and start paying attention to the universe. Unhappiness is the ultimate form of self-indulgence. When you're unhappy, you get to pay a lot of attention to yourself. You get to take yourself oh so very seriously.

The trouble with the fast lane is that all the movement is horizontal. And I like to go vertical sometimes.

There's no point in saving the world if it means losing the moon.