Conservatives must avoid the siren song of schism, or all is lost.

Writing for me is cutting out the fat and getting to the meaning.

So wide is the range of the scavengers that it is never safe to say, eyewitness to the contrary, that there are few or many in such a place.

Love won’t be tampered with, love won’t go away. Push it to one side and it creeps to the other.

First you jump off the cliff and you build wings on the way down.

Optimism is not inherently a superior way of viewing the world. Certainly doctors will say it might be better for one’s physical health to be an optimist. But, morally speaking it may not be appropriate...

Little minds are tamed and subdued by misfortune; but great minds rise above them.

I think most Americans believe that although it’s better not to use military force if you can avoid it, that the world simply doesn’t provide us the luxury of giving away military force as an...

I’ve been getting into Nick Drake lately, the folk singer. Sad, gorgeous stuff.

Quite often my narrator or protagonist may be a man, but I’m not sure he’s the more interesting character, or if the more complex character isn’t the woman.

This persistence as private firms continued because it ensured the maximum of anonymity and secrecy to persons of tremendous public power who dreaded public knowledge of their activities as an evil almost as great as...

I learned that you should feel when writing, not like Lord Byron on a mountain top, but like child stringing beads in kindergarten, – happy, absorbed and quietly putting one bead on after another.

I don’t dictate the solos and I don’t dictate the vocal harmonies.

A hamburger by any other name costs twice as much.

Love grows by giving. The love we give away is the only love we keep. The only way to retain love is to give it away.

People ask me how I do research for my science fiction. The answer is, I never do any research.

Fear clogs; faith liberates.

In recent times, European nations, with the use of gunpowder and other technical improvements in warfare, controlled practically the whole world. One, the British Empire, brought under one government a quarter of the earth and...

There will always be men struggling to change, and there will always be those who are controlled by the past.

Never doubt that you can change history. You already have.

I essentially write for myself.

Yale is practicing a most unusual media strategy. I’d call it Just say nothing.

Gossip, even when it avoids the sexual, bears around it a faint flavor of the erotic.

When I want to show the kind of meanness people are capable of, to make it believable I find I have to tone it down. It’s in real life that people are over the top.

A woman never forgets her sex. She would rather talk with a man than an angel, any day.

I feel that these stories are being written to articulate certain confusions and disappointments, and I do mean to shake up the reader, and I do hope they’re on target.

You have to figure out who the right person is to tell the story. And often, people who are very self-aware will only sound as if they are pontificating if they tell the story.

So much relies on the singer I thought the best way to avoid that problem was to become the singer!

The trouble with Reason is that it becomes meaningless at the exact point where it refuses to act.

I admire Bruce Springsteen because he’s a heroic person who has lots of integrity and has this incredible body of work that is so vital.

I haven’t got the slightest idea how to change people, but still I keep a long list of prospective candidates just in case I should ever figure it out.

It does not take much strength to do things, but it requires great strength to decide on what to do.

Often we can help each other most by leaving each other alone; at other times we need the hand-grasp and the word of cheer.

Yes, limits can be self-imposed. But, as regards space, especially, they’re starting to dwindle. It can be the same way for people.

The history of our civilization has been one of intermittent war.

I’ve boxed, though not professionally.

Death by starvation is slow.

The first thing you have to do is get immersed in the project, organizing yourself, knowing what you are going after and not going after.

You may glory in a team triumphant… But you fall in love with a team in defeat.

I admit there’s an element of brutality in all my work – it’s part of the truth about human existence I always want to explore – but the last thing I’m trying to do is...

They who drink beer will think beer.

Our society is not a community, but merely a collection of isolated family units.

But then of course you reach a point where you have to say, I’ve got to figure out how this book’s going to end. Otherwise, you’re going to write yourself into so many dead-ends.

I think that I’m serious, but I don’t think that I’m inordinately bleak.

It never occurred to anyone in a responsible position that Germany and Russia might make common cause, even temporarily, against the West.

In fact, there is clear evidence of black intellectual superiority: in 1984, 92 percent of blacks voted to retire Ronald Reagan, compared to only 36 percent of whites.

About 10 years ago, I took some vocal lessons. I’ll bet that helped. I got a tape of exercises that the girl gave me, which I don’t do anymore, but they were good. And I...

Ritalin abuse is a big issue in the US.

If you can’t answer a man’s arguments, all is not lost; you can still call him vile names.

I did that for 40 years or more. I never had any writer’s block. I got up in the morning, sat down at the typewriter – now, computer – lit up a cigarette.