Confession is good for the soul only in the sense that a tweed coat is good for dandruff - it is a palliative rather than a remedy.

Gluttony is an emotional escape, a sign something is eating us.

I love being a writer. What I can't stand is the paperwork.

Murals in restaurants are on a par with the food in museums.

Life is a zoo in a jungle.

It is the final proof of God's omnipotence that he need not exist in order to save us.

You can make a sordid thing sound like a brilliant drawing-room comedy. Probably a fear we have of facing up to the real issues. Could you say we were guilty of Noel Cowardice?

I write when I'm inspired, and I see to it that I'm inspired at nine o'clock every morning.

The difficulty with marriage is that we fall in love with a personality, but must live with a character.

The value of marriage is not that adults produce children but that children produce adults.

A hundred years ago Hester Prynne of The Scarlet Letter was given an A for adultery; today she would rate no better than a C-plus.

everything that is scatteredcomes together in wordseverything that is lostcomes back in poetry.

Madhouses are houses made on purpose to cause suffering . . . I cannot stand any longer the screams of these creatures.

Each age has its choice of the death it will die.

What would you like?" "A skinny decaf latte." This is a ridiculous form of coffee, but I did not point it out.

I use the traditional Moyse scale books slightly modified.

As other perceptions arise...the total vision of human possibilities enlarges and is transformed.

Universities won't survive. The future is outside the traditional campus, outside the traditional classroom. Distance learning is coming on fast.

Listen my love, illumination is eternal. Now is always evolving. As there are billions of stars, there are billions of steps. As there are billions of souls, there are billions of ways to grow.

I've always had this juxtaposition of characters, because I'm an artist. I'm a very quiet person at home and introspective and the whole deal, and then I can be really big later. I had no problem.

Change isn't always bad; we should always be learning and improving. But the change I was seeing involved principles, not procedures.