But let no one imagine that we were mere ascetics. There is no more complex pleasure than thought, and it was to thought that we delivered ourselves over.

There are those who seek the love of a woman to forget her, to not think about her.

He was very religious he believed that he had a secret pact with God which exempted him from doing good in exchange for prayers and piety.

I prayed aloud, less to plead for divine favor than to intimidate the tribe with articulate speech.

Tearing money is an impiety, like throwing away bread.

So witless did these ideas strike me as being, so sweeping and pompous the way they were expressed, that I associated them immediately with literature.

I guess when you turn off the main road, you have to be prepared to see some funny houses.

BTW A 24 week old embryo is not a human being. You're not a human being until you're in my phone book.

It would be about as easy for an American to become a Chinaman or a Hindoo as for him to acquire an Englishness or a Frenchness or a European-ness that is more than half skin deep.

I've never been able to understand where great artists come from.

Only among people who think no evil can Evil monstrously flourish.

One of the crises that we have to deal with is a crisis of law enforcement officials that are not physically capable enough to handle without taking out the gun.

You can use a biography to examine political power, but only if you pick the right guy.

I love food, I love eating.

I'm not some kind of machine that paints pictures.

It appears that the present-day form of African American English is not the inheritance of the period of slavery, but the creation of the second half of the 20th century.