Why can I never set my heart on a possible thing?

When in the Land of Property think like a propertarian. Dress like one, eat like one, act like one, be one.

Literacy is so you can read the operating instructions.

Growing up during World War II certainly affected my whole view of life, but I hardly know how, it goes so deep. What's hard to explain now is that, though we were never invaded, and bombed only once and ineffectively on the coast of Oregon, everybody in the country was in that war. Everything we did was influenced by it - eating, traveling, dressing, thinking - everything in daily life.

My great-aunt. . . . said nobody under 18 had any business reading Dickens. . . . She was right.

Fiction—and poetry and drama— cleanse the doors of perception.

As a kitten does what all other kittens do, so a child wants to do what other children do, with a wanting that is as powerful as it is mindless. Since we human beings have to learn what we do, we have to start out that way, but human mindfulness begins where that wish to be the same leaves off.