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.

We use so much bad language that it forms a barrier between ourselves and the truth.

Brilliantly, ecstatically, irrepressibly. This is the way to burn

Using words to describe magic is like using a screwdriver to cut roast beef.

Eighty percent of love is smell.

Society had a crime problem. It hired cops to attack crime. Now society has a cop problem.

The beet is the most intense of vegetables. The radish, admittedly, is more feverish, but the fire of the radish is a cold fire, the fire of discontent, not of passion. Tomatoes are lusty enough, yet there runs through tomatoes an undercurrent of frivolity. Beets are deadly serious.