“Prejudice is a raft onto which the shipwrecked mind clambers and paddles to safety.”

H.L.Mencken’s war aims, according to the handful of observers who deigned to notice his conflict, were the overthrow of American Democracy, the Christian religion, and the YMCA. He was also credited with trying to wipe out poets and luncheon orators.

Movies are one of the bad habits that have corrupted our century. They have slipped into the American mind more misinformation in one evening than the Dark Ages could muster in a decade.

Innocent people can get into terrible jams, too. One false move and you’re in over your head.

Television excites me because it seems to be the last stamping ground of poetry, the last place where I hear women’s hair rhapsodically described, women’s faces acclaimed in odelike language.

Trying to determine what is going on in the world by reading newspapers is like trying to tell the time by watching the second hand of a clock.

Despite all our toil and progress, the art of medicine still falls somewhere between trout casting and spook writing.

There’s one thing that keeps surprising you about stormy old friends after they die – their silence.

That God has managed to survive the inanities of the religions that do Him homage is truly a miraculous proof of His existence.

Love is the magician that pulls him out of his own hat.

A wise man will always allow a fool to rob him of ideas without yelling “Thief.” If he is wise he has not been impoverished. Nor has the fool been enriched. The thief flatters us by stealing. We flatter him by complaining.

The honors Hollywood has for the writer are as dubious as tissue-paper cuff links.

He was in love with life as an ant on a summer blade of grass.

They’re a symbol of the whole town, pretending to fight, love, weep and laugh all the time – and they’re phonies, all of them. And I head the list…their phony hearts were dripping with the milk of human kindness.

When you overpay small people you frighten them. They know that their merits or activities entitle them to no such sums as they are receiving. As a result their boss soars out of economic into magic significance.

Criticism can never instruct or benefit you. Its chief effect is that of a telegram with dubious news. Praise leaves no glow behind, for it is a writer’s habit to remember nothing good of himself.

There is nothing as dull as an intellectual ally after a certain age.

No man should put their life in someone else’s hands unless they have covered their own safety from all angles.

Certain temperaments respond to anxiety by pulling inward.

It’s not about standing still and becoming safe. If anybody wants to keep creating they have to be about change.

Their instincts tell them ‘ Don’t go out to meet the world – you’ll have a panic attack. Inside is where safety is.

Everything that we believe in and count on is really in question right now. Our safety net, public education, housing, health care.

Lord, be my rock of safety, the stronghold that saves me. For the honor of your name lead me and guide me.

No one is out to break your heart, it only seems that way.

War is chaotic and when you start having a larger scale film and you have a lot of safety protocols and choreography,