1492. As children we were taught to memorize this year with pride and joy as the year people began living full and imaginative lives on the continent of North America. Actually, people had been living full and imaginative lives on the continent of North America for hundreds of years before that. 1492 was simply the year sea pirates began to rob, cheat, and kill them.
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I pity the Jews trying to get through life with only half a Bible. That's like trying to get from here to San Francisco with a road map that stops at Dubuque, Iowa.
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How nice--to feel nothing, and still get full credit for being alive.
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High school is closer to the core of the American experience than anything else I can think of.
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People have to talk about something just to keep their voice boxes in working order so they'll have good voice boxes in case there's ever anything really meaningful to say.
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People have to talk about something just to keep their good voice boxes in working order, so they'll have good voice boxes in case there's ever anything really meaningful to say
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Here’s what I think the truth is: We are all addicts of fossil fuels in a state of denial, about to face cold turkey.
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Life happens too fast for you ever to think about it. If you could just persuade people of this, but they insist on amassing information.
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There are plenty of good reasons for fighting, I said, but no good reason ever to have without reservation, to imagine that God Almighty Himself hates with you, too. Where's evil? It's that large part of every man that wants to hate without limit, that wants to hate with God on its side. It's that part of every man that finds all kinds of ugliness so attractive.
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Any reviewer who expresses rage and loathing for a novel is preposterous. He or she is like a person who has put on full armor and attacked a hot fudge sundae.
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It strikes me as gruesome and comical that in our culture we have an expectation that man can always solve his problems. This is so untrue that it makes me want to cry--or laugh.
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Beware of the man who works hard to learn something, learns it, and finds himself no wiser than before He is full of murderous resentment of people who are ignorant without having come by their ignorance the hard way.
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Beware of the man who works hard to learn something, learns it, and finds himself no wiser than before. He is full of murderous resentment of people who are ignorant without having come by their ignorance the hard way
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Say what you will about the sweet miracle of unquestioning faith, I consider a capacity for it terrifying and absolutely vile!
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About astrology and palmistry: they are good because they make people vivid and full of possibilities. They are communism at its best. Everybody has a birthday and almost everybody has a palm.
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All persons, living or dead, are purely coincidental, and should not be construed.
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Maturity is a bitter disappointment for which no remedy exists, unless laughter can be said to remedy anything
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During my three years in Vietnam, I certainly heard plenty of last words by dying American footsoldiers. Not one of them, however, had illusions that he had somehow accomplished something worthwhile in the process of making the Supreme Sacrifice.
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I am eternally grateful.. for my knack of finding in great books, some of them very funny books, reason enough to feel honored to be alive, no matter what else might be going on.
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We are what we pretend to be, so we must be careful about what we pretend to be.
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A purpose of human life, no matter who is controlling it, is to love whoever is around to be loved.
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The chief weapon of sea pirates, however, was their capacity to astonish. Nobody else could believe, until it was too late, how heartless and greedy they were.
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Any reviewer who expresses rage and loathing for a novel is preposterous. He or she is like a person who has put on full armor and attacked a hot fudge sundae
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Maturity is a bitter disappointment for which no remedy exists, unless laughter can be said to remedy anything.
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I want to stay as close to the edge as I can without going over. Out on the edge you see all kinds of things you can't see from the center.
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History is merely a list of surprises. It can only prepare us to be surprised yet again
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I want the people of New Jersey to jump off a cliff like Kurt Vonnegut so I can show them how to fly. This way, nobody needs to grow any wings, which would be impossible anyway because we're humans and not some kind of bird.
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I want to stay as close to the edge as I can without going over. Out on the edge you see all kinds of things you can’t see from the centre.
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I really wonder what gives us the right to wreck this poor planet of ours.
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Another flaw in the human character is that everybody wants to build and nobody wants to do maintenance.
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