Nonsense, n. The objections that are urged against this excellent dictionary.

Speak when you are angry and you will make the best speech you will ever regret.

The most affectionate creature in the world is a wet dog.

War is God's way of teaching Americans geography.

In our civilization, and under our republican form of government, intelligence is so highly honored that it is rewarded by exemption from the cares of office.

Mayonnaise: One of the sauces which serve the French in place of a state religion.

Admiral. That part of a warship which does the talking while the figurehead does the thinking.

Spring beckons! All things to the call respond; the trees are leaving and cashiers abscond.

NEPOTISM, n. Appointing your grandmother to office for the good of the party.

Divorce: a resumption of diplomatic relations and rectification of boundaries.

Clairvoyant, n.: A person, commonly a woman, who has the power of seeing that which is invisible to her patron - namely, that he is a blockhead.

I would like The Discovery of Poetry to be a field guide to the natural pleasures of language - a happiness we were born to have.

Why are you alive? To discover joy and to share that joy with others.

I have this theory: If you forgive someone, they can't hurt you anymore.

I guess the two things I was most interested in were telescopes and steam engines. My father was an engineer on a threshing rig steam engine and I loved the machinery.

I got a lot of flak originally for writing with photographs, because the great cliche in photography is that one photograph is worth a thousand words, and photographers are usually dodo birds anyway.

Anyone who's ever filed a tax return or visited the Department of Motor Vehicles understands that government does two things well: spend our money and waste our time.

That's the trouble with caring about anybody, you begin to feel overprotective. Then you begin to feel crowded.

The truth is not simply what you think it is; it is also the circumstances in which it is said, and to whom, why, and how it is said.

My short stories have always pushed twenty pages. That's no length for a short story to be. You either do them short like Carver or you stop trying.