Wit penetrates; humor envelops. Wit is a function of verbal intelligence; humor is imagination operating on good nature.

A speech is poetry: cadence, rhythm, imagery, sweep! A speech reminds us that words, like children, have the power to make dance the dullest beanbag of a heart.

The battle for the mind of Ronald Reagan was like the trench warfare of World War I: never have so many fought so hard for such barren terrain.

TV gives everyone an image, but radio gives birth to a million images in a million brains.

Naps are nature's way of reminding you that life is nice, like a beautiful swinging hammock strung between birth and infinity.

If you join government, calmly make your contribution and move on. Don't go along to get along; do your best and when you have to - and you will - leave, and be something else.

You don't have to be old in America to say of a world you lived in: 'that world is gone.'

Part of courage is simple consistency.

You can get so well educated in America that your thoughts become detached from common sense. You can get so complicated in your thinking that the obvious isn't real to you anymore.

I think miracles exist in part as gifts and in part as clues that there is something beyond the flat world we see.

Morals are concerned with what aids or impedes the fulfillment of basic human needs.

It pains me to have all this knowledge and no one to share it with, I’d have to say its number 3 on my list. – Of what causes me the most pain.

A perpetual holiday is a good working definition of hell.

The moral backbone of literature is about that whole question of memory. To my mind it seems clear that those who have no memory have the much greater chance to lead happy lives.

There is a big difference between being lonely and being alone. I am alone when I write, but I am rarely lonely.

All in all I learned a lesson from it though. You never see it coming you just get to see it go.

Men in plural […] can experience meaningfulness only because they can talk with and make sense to each other and themselves.

It was lucky that the linesman wasn't stood in front of me as I would have poked him with a stick to make sure he was awake.

Art class was like a religious ceremony to me. I would wash my hands carefully before touching paper or pencils. The instruments of work were sacred objects to me.

I think part of the success which Structuralist or post-Structuralist thought in critical theory has had in literary studies in American universities is due to a theoretical vacuum.

Life is difficult enough without Meryl Streep movies.