The problem in our country isn't with books being banned, but with people no longer reading. You don't have to burn books to destroy a culture. Just get people to stop reading them.

I often wonder if God recognizes His own son the way we've dressed him up, or is it dressed him down?

The zipper displaces the button and a man lacks just that much time to think while dressing at dawn, a philosophical hour, and thus a melancholy hour.

But you can't make people listen. They have to come round in their own time, wondering what happened and why the world blew up around them. It can't last.

Don't ask for guarantees. And don't look to be saved in any one thing, person, machine, or library. Do your own bit of saving, and if you drown, at least die knowing you were heading for shore.

The good writers touch life often. The mediocre ones run a quick hand over her. The bad ones rape her and leave her for the flies.

The magic is only in what books say, how they stitched the patches of the universe together into one garment for us.

It doesn't matter what you do...so long as you change something from the way it was before you touched it into something that's like you after you take your hands away.

It didn't come from the Government down. There was no dictum, no declaration, no censorship, to start with, no! Technology, mass exploitation, and minority pressure carried the trick, thank God.

I just want someone to hear what I have to say. And maybe if I talk long enough, it’ll make sense.

Digression is the soul of wit. Take the philosophic asides away from Dante, Milton or Hamlet's father's ghost and what stays is dry bones.

To me, you were more than just a person. You were a place where I finally felt at home.

The unwelcome November rain had perversely stolen the day's last hour and pawned it with that ancient fence, the night.

... there is nothing under the moon, however fine, that is not subject to corruption.

Man is a social animal.

Only 13.7% of churches in America are consider multiethnic. This means that 86.3 % of churches are homogenous.

Everybody funny, now you funny too.

The persuasion of a friend is a strong thing.

Where you are going to spend your time and your energy is one of the most important decisions you get to make in life.

He who has ceased to learn has ceased to teach. He who no longer sows in the study will no more reap in the pulpit.

By the time I was ready for college, I didn't know what I wanted to do. I think I secretly wanted a show business career, but I was suppressing it.