Because there is very little honor left in American life, there is a certain built-in tendency to destroy masculinity in American men.

Writing books is the closest men ever come to childbearing.

A modern democracy is a tyranny whose borders are undefined; one discovers how far one can go only by traveling in a straight line until one is stopped.

The function of socialism is to raise suffering to a higher level.

Khomeini has offered us the opportunity to regain our frail religion ... faith in the power of words.

There was that law of life, so cruel and so just, that one must grow or else pay more for remaining the same.

Any war that requires the suspension of reason as a necessity for support is a bad war.

America is a hurricane, and the only people who do not hear the sound are those fortunate if incredibly stupid and smug White Protestants who live in the center, in the serene eye of the big wind.

I was thinking that surgeons had to be the happiest people on earth. To cut people up and get paid for it-that's happiness, I told myself.

Love asks us that we be a little braver than is comfortable, a little more generous, a little more flexible. It means living on the edge more than we care to.

Reaching consensus in a group is often confused with finding the right answer.

Accept the past, dream of the future, but live in the moment.

When I die, I desire no better winding sheet than the Stars and Stripes, and no softer pillow than the Constitution of my country.

I don't know if the record is going to happen. I don't really think about the record. There are other things I worry about.

All things are possible to one who believes.

Truth is, I didn't know what the hell I was doing when I got out of Cal Arts. I think I wasted a lot of time not being bold enough, or still engaged in the questioning that you get into at school.

Who told you that one paints with colors? One makes use of colors, but one paints with emotions.

Let us dig our furrow in the fields of the commonplace.

Once the music gets in you, it doesn't leave you.

Ken Bates is a football cretin.

There is an element of paranoia in this inclination to view any serious attempt at a compromised peace as somehow directed against Israel.