Civilizations grow by agreements and accomodations and accretions, not by repudiations. The rebels and the revolutionaries are only eddies, they keep the stream from getting stagnant but they get swept down and absorbed, they're a side issue. Quiet desperation is another name for the human condition. If revolutionaries would learn that they can't remodel society by day after tomorrow -- haven't the wisdom to and shouldn't be permitted to -- I'd have more respect for them ... Civilizations grow and change and decline -- they aren't remade.

Every time. You know why? I want to fail. I work like a dog for twenty years so I'll have the supreme pleasure of failing. Never knew anybody like that, did you? I'm very cunning. I plan it in advance. I fool myself right up to the last minute, and then the time comes and I know how cunningly I've been planning it all the time. I've been a failure all my life.

It is the abiding concern of thinking people to preserve what keeps men human-to save our contact with nature of which we are a part.

Home is a notion that only nations of the homeless fully appreciate and only the uprooted comprehend.

Water is the true wealth in a dry land.

It's easier to die than to move ... at least for the Other Side you don't need trunks.

Have a chance to create a society to match its scenery.