Religion obviously played a role in this book and the previous book, too.

How come you don't work fourteen hours a day? Your great-great-grandparents did. How come you only work the eight-hour day? Four guys got hanged fighting for the eight-hour day for you.

People are hungry for stories. It's part of our very being. Storytelling is a form of history, of immortality too. It goes from one generation to another. -Studs Terkel

Most of us have jobs that are too small for our spirits.

Perhaps it is this specter that most haunts working men and women: the planned obsolescence of people that is of a piece with the planned obsolescence of the things they make. Or sell.

I want people to talk to one another no matter what their difference of opinion might be.

We are living in the United States of Alzheimer's. A whole country has lost its memory. When it can't remember yesterday, a country forgets what it once wanted to be.

Hope never trickles down. It always springs up.

Ordinary people are capable of doing extraordinary things, and that's what it's all about. They must count.

I've always felt, in all my books, that there's a deep decency in the American people and a native intelligence - providing they have the facts, providing they have the information.

More and more we are into communications; and less and less into communication.

Discussion is impossible with someone who claims not to seek the truth, but already to possess it.

Reputation Is Temporary..As Much as The Man Owning Your Reputation Is

Oh, don't look at this frail, old druid like that, Solomon. I may be slow in my movements, buy my mind is sharp as a dagger's tip." Lazerin smirked.

Authority, when first detecting chaos at its heels, will entertain the vilest schemes to save its orderly facade.

Ramses had always been fond of Helen, in his peculiar fashion, but if he had looked at me as he was looking at her, I would have sent for a constable.

Dogs understand your moods and your thoughts, and if you are thinking unpleasant things about your dog, he will pick it up and be downhearted.

Do Americans want the government to micromanage every aspect of our lives? President Ronald Reagan certainly didn't.

There will be over 3,500 killed in USA today from abortion. No flags lowered, no presidents crying. No media hyperventilating. Normal day.

It's very important to know when you're in a pissing match. And it's very important to get out of it as quickly as possible.

I try to be patient. I feel like the point of art is to go down within yourself and to pop up into other people. If you're lucky, all of a sudden you're like, "whoop!" You're in other people.