Perhaps I am the turtle, able to live simply anywhere, even underwater for short periods, with my home on my back.
If you can do no good, at least do no harm.
I was a chemistry major, but I'm always winding up as a teacher in English departments, so I've brought scientific thinking to literature. There's been very little gratitude for this.
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.
The Fourteenth Book is entitled, What can a Thoughtful Man Hope for Mankind on Earth, Given the Experience of the Past Million Years? It doesn't take long to read The Fourteenth Book. It consists of o...
Take care of the people, and god almighty will take care of himself.
So I went to New York City to be born again. It was and remains easy for most Americans to go somewhere else and start anew. I wasn't like my parents. I didn't have any supposedly sacred piece of land...
Most kids can't afford to go to Harvard to be misinformed.
For some reason, the most vocal Christians among us never mention the Beatitudes (Matthew 5). But, often with tears in their eyes, they demand that the Ten Commandments be posted in public buildings....
Everything is nothing, with a twist.
All persons, living and dead, are purely coincidental.
All time is all time. It does not change. It does not lend itself to warnings or explanations. It simply is.
The bounties of space, of infinite outwardness, were three: empty heroics, low comedy, and pointless death.
If somebody says 'I love you' to me, I feel as though I had a pistol pointed at my head. What can anybody reply under such conditions but that which the pistol holder requires? 'I love you, too'.
I realize that some of you may have come in hopes of hearing tips on how tobecome a professional writer. I say to you, If you really want to hurt yourparents, and you don't have the nerve to be a homo...
When I'm being funny, I try not to offend. I don't think much of what I've done has been in really ghastly taste. I don't think I have embarrassed many people or distressed them.
Since Alice had never received any religious instruction, and since she had led a blameless life, she never thought of her awful luck as being anything but accidents in a very busy place. Good for her...
She was a dull person, but a sensational invitation to make babies.
No art is possible without a dance with death, he wrote.
Love is where you find it. I think it is foolish to go looking for it, and I think it can often be poisonous.