"I can only assume that your editorial writer tripped over the First Amendment and thought it was the office cat."

"Writing is an act of faith, not a trick of grammar."

"Whatever else an American believes or disbelieves about himself, he is absolutely sure he has a sense of humor."

"When I was a child people simply looked about them and were moderately happy today they peer beyond the seven seas, bury themselves waist deep in tidings, and by and large what they see and hear makes them unutterably sad."

"I wanted to write about my mother as she should have been if she had not been messed up by World War I."

"Abstraction brings the world into more complex, variable relations it can extract beauty, alternative topographies, ugliness, and intense actualities from seeming nothingness."

"Remember, as long as you live, that nothing but strict truth can carry you through the world, with either your conscience or your honor unwounded."

"My kingdom is not of this world. If it were, my servants would fight to prevent my arrest by the Jews. But now my kingdom is from another place."