One doesn't read Jane Austen; one re-reads Jane Austen.

Life can't be all bad when for ten dollars you can buy all the Beethoven sonatas and listen to them for ten years.

Decent people should ignore politics, if only they could be confident that politics would ignore them

I profoundly believe it takes a lot of practice to become a moral slob.

... to say that the CIA and the KGB engage in similar practices is the equivalent of saying that the man who pushes an old lady into the path of a hurtling bus is not to be distinguished from the man who pushes an old lady out of the path of a hurtling bus: on the grounds that, after all, in both cases someone is pushing old ladies around.

They [Theodore White and Lou Harris] took turns weeping, and finally concluded that Rockefeller got the votes of everyone in California who is a Negro, a Jew, a Mexican, and a college graduate, while Goldwater got the votes of every millionaire. Which certainly makes California the land of opportunity.

The Beatles are not merely awful. I would consider it sacrilegious to say anything less than that they are godawful.