“The Iraq war was fought by one-half of one percent of us. And unless we were part of that small group or had a relative who was, we went about our lives as usual most of the time: no draft, no new taxes, no changes. Not so for the small group who fought the war and their families.”

Somehow, stars have a lot of class if they are done right; they never have a shelf life.

They’ve asked me to do this temporarily. I don’t know what temporarily means. Life is temporary.

If you listen to really deep ambient records that don’t move too much, very still records, long after those records are finished, you might find yourself listening for hours to the sound of the room.

Once you realize there is life after mistakes, you gain a self-confidence that never goes away.

The only people helped by the death tax are lawyers, accountants, and IRS agents.

We are all drifting reefwards now, and faith is our only anchor.

Know that it is good to work. Work with love, and think of liking it when you do it. It is easy and interesting. It is a privilege. There is nothing hard about it but your anxious vanity and fear of failure.

My dad was a dentist but I wasn’t a hygienist. I assisted my dad.

There’s fierce competition between all the networks to get the guest who can bring the most pertinent information about whatever the story of the moment happens to be.

The first thing the federal government can do to help is get out of the way.

The revolution has been dubbed “The Orange Revolution,” orange being the campaign color of Viktor Yushchenko. The demonstrators say they are tired of living under a corrupt government…

I would love to see the French spending money to restore Iraq.

The government’s view is that the best time to announce bad news, news that it doesn’t want the public to dwell on is late on a Friday, when it will wind up in the Saturday papers, which if you were readers, then the week day editions. A holiday weekend is even better.

Nowadays I’m not even sure if newspapers take into account whether a person is a good writer.

The truth is the Super Bowl long ago became more than just a football game. It’s part of our culture, like turkey at Thanksgiving and lights at Christmas, and like those holidays – beyond their meaning – a factor in our economy.

The recent history of Ukraine is replete with dead journalists, beaten journalists, news agencies being shut down, and politicians being injured or killed. Most are killed in mysterious auto accidents.

Mixing pop and politics he asks me what the use is / I offer him embarrassment and my usual excuses.

This is not the time for partisan bickering. This is not the time for politics as usual. Some of us are Democrats. Some of us are Republicans. Some of us are Independents. Above all, we must be Oklahomans first.

Just charge me with the usual.

A good writer refuses to be socialized. He insists on his own version of things, his own consciousness. And by doing so he draws the reader’s eye from its usual groove into a new way of seeing things.

Adventure is something out of the usual pattern, a point at which you cannot avoid confronting the unknown, so that you have to dig inside yourself to find the courage and resources to deal with what may lie ahead, and to succeed.

In vain we shall penetrate more and more deeply the secrets of the structure of the human body, we shall not dupe nature; we shall die as usual.

How much do they be paying you?” he asked mellowly. “The usual salary. A little more than they think I’m worth and a little less than I think I’m worth.

Nature intends that, at fixed periods, men should succeed each other by the instrumentality of death. We shall never outwit Nature; we shall die as usual.