The liberal paradigm of regulation and license has led to a society where an 18-year-old girl has the right to public fornication in a pornographic movie - but only if she is paid the minimum wage.

Democracy does not guarantee equality of conditions - it only guarantees equality of opportunity.

Even if we can't be happy, we must always be cheerful.

One can be unhappy before eating caviar, even after, but at least not during.

The enemy of liberal capitalism today is not so much socialism as nihilism.

A conservative is a liberal mugged by reality.

If you believe that no one was ever corrupted by a book, you have also to believe that no one was ever improved by a book.

Nostalgia is one of the legitimate and certainly one of the most enduring of human emotions; but the politics of nostalgia is at best distracting, at worst pernicious.

The major political event of the twentieth century is the death of socialism.

A welfare state, properly conceived, can be an integral part of a conservative society.

The really difficult moral issues arise, not from a confrontation of good and evil, but from a collision between two goods

I think it's really important to have a sense of humor.

Try to take hold of your sensibility, and use it as if it were a faculty, like vision.

You go to the marketplace and there are seventeen consciousnesses moving in and out. Sometimes you want the same shirt that I want, and our thought bubbles collide a bit and that makes plot.

When you write on your own, you can write the extremes. No one else is watching and you can really go as far as you need to.

Why was so much evil pleasant, pretty on the outside, like poisoned candy?

Understanding the nature of conflict leads to peace.

And exciting buildings are fine periodically.

Donald Trump's mother, who said, Donnie! Stop playing Monopoly and get in that barber's chair! Never got a dinner!

I've never seen anyone sleep with their head hanging off the back of a wooden chair before - was the couch not comfortable enough for you?

When your heart and your mind are engaged, you cannot go wrong.