War is pillage versus resistance and if illusions of magnitude could be transmuted into ideals of magnanimity, peace might be realized.

As for butterflies, I can hardly conceive of one's attending upon you; but to question the congruence of the complement is vain, if it exists.

Poetry is the art of creating imaginary gardens with real toads.

Your thorns are the best part of you.

Any writer overwhelmingly honest about pleasing himself is almost sure to please others.

Originality is... a by-product of sincerity.

Camels are snobbish and sheep, unintelligent; water buffaloes, neurasthenic-- even murderous. Reindeer seem over-serious.

Omissions are not accidents.

The hands are the heart's messengers.

The passion for setting people right is in itself an afflictive disease.

When one cannot appraise out of one's own experience, the temptation to blunder is minimized, but even when one can, appraisal seems chiefly useful as appraisal of the appraiser.

because God has spoken, and everything else is commentary.

If you can't set a better example for progress, don't show disapproval against the worse tradition!

The dollar bills attached to her hips fluttered to the rug of the small square stage, like the first flakes of winter in the Bronx. (Dark City Lights)

New York is the place where everyone will stop a championship fight to look at an usher giving a drunk the bum's rush.

Bush and Blair combined their efforts to deceive both nations in a carefully coordinated manner, more so than anyone is willing to point out in the media.

There's nothing wrong with having a tree as a friend.

God gives us life, but the world's landlord is the devil.

People who are very vain are usually equally susceptible; and they who feel one thing acutely, will so feel another.

Once, I cut off a man's head, but he did not know it until he tried to brush his hair. Then it fell off.

... people are capable of more than their organizational positions ever give them the tools or the time or the opportunity to demonstrate.