Television wrecked the short-story branch of the industry, and now accountants and business school graduates dominate book publishing. They feel that money spent on someone’s first novel is good money down a rat hole.

What good is*a planet called Earth, after all, if you own no land?

I mean jazz. 1 don't mean rock and roll. I mean the never-the-same-way-twice music the American black people gave the world.

She had figured out that the most pervasive American disease was loneliness, and that even people at the top often suffered from it, and that they could be surprisingly responsive to attractive strangers who were friendly.

What should young people do with their lives today? Many things, obviously. But the most daring thing is to create stable communities in which the terrible disease of loneliness can be cured.

For a Russian to be chivalrous with an American is a spiritual impossibility, a conradiction in terms.

Just because we think we’re so wonderful doesn't mean we really are. We could be really terrible animals and just never admit it because it would hurt so much.

We are all experiments in enthusiasms, narrow and preordained.

What could be more essential in a pluralistic society like ours than that every citizen see dignity in every other human being everywhere?

Of course, one dictionary is as good as another to most people, who use them for spellers and bet-settlers and accessories to crossword puzzles and Scrabble games.