All persons, living or dead, are purely coincidental, and should not be construed.

We are what we pretend to be, but we better be very careful what we pretend.

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.

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.

We are what we pretend to be, so we must be careful what we pretend to be.

Be careful what you pretend to be because you are what you pretend to be.

New knowledge is the most valuable commodity on earth. The more truth we have to work with, the richer we become.

Ignore the awful times, and concentrate on the good ones.

Thanks to TV and for the convenience of TV, you can only be one of two kinds of human beings, either a liberal or a conservative.

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.

Well, the telling of jokes is an art of its own, and it always rises from some emotional threat. The best jokes are dangerous, and dangerous because they are in some way truthful.

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.

Another flaw in the human character is that everybody wants to build and nobody wants to do maintenance.

Don't be reckless with other people's hearts, And don't put up with people that are reckless with yours.

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.

How nice--to feel nothing, and still get full credit for being alive.

Laughter and tears are both responses to frustration and exhaustion. I myself prefer to laugh, since there is less cleaning up to do afterward.

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.

There is a tragic flaw in our precious Constitution, and I don?t know what can be done to fix it. This is it: Only nut cases want to be president.

Everything was beautiful and nothing hurt.

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.

I really wonder what gives us the right to wreck this poor planet of ours.

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.

We are what we pretend to be, so we must be careful about what we pretend to be.

Maturity is a bitter disappointment for which no remedy exists, unless laughter can be said to remedy anything.

If you would be unloved and forgotten, be reasonable.

High school is closer to the core of the American experience than anything else I can think of.

You know what I say to people when I hear they?re writing an anti-war book?? I say, "why don?t you write an anti-glacier book instead?"
What he meant, of course, was that there would always be wars, that they were as easy to stop as glaciers. I believe that, too.

A purpose of human life, no matter who is controlling it, is to love whoever is around to be loved.

One of the few good things about modern times: If you die horribly on television, you will not have died in vain. You will have entertained us.

Say what you will about the sweet miracle of unquestioning faith, I consider a capacity for it terrifying and absolutely vile!

Like so many Americans, she was trying to construct a life that made sense from things she found in gift shops.