“Take it moment by moment, and you will find that we are all, as I’ve said before, bugs in amber.”

We’d been apart so long-I’d been dead so long, she said in English. I thought surely you’d built a new life, with no room in it for me. I’d hoped that.

And Lot’s wife, of course, was told not to look back where all those people and their homes had been. But she did look back, and I love her for that, because it was so human. So she was turned into a pillar of salt. So it goes.

She hated people who thought too much. At that moment, she struck me as an appropriate representative for almost all mankind.

The nicest veterans, the kindest and funniest ones, the ones who hated war the most, were the ones who’d really fought.

Being a Humanist means trying to behave decently without expectation of rewards or punishment after you are dead.

The last thing I ever wanted was to be alive when the three most powerful people on the whole planet would be named Bush, Dick and Colon.

Everything was beautiful and nothing hurt.

All time is all time. It does not change. It does not lend itself to warnings or explanations. It simply is. Take it moment by moment, and you will find that we are all, as I’ve said before, bugs in amber.

Maturity, is knowing what your limitations are, Maturity is a bitter disappointment for which no remedy exists, unless laughter can be said to remedy anything.

Charm was a scheme for making strangers like and trust a person immediately, no matter what the charmer had in mind.

So the America I loved still exists, if not in the White House or the Supreme Court or the Senate or the House of Representatives or the media. The America I love still exists at the front desks of our public libraries.

I want to stand as close to the edge as I can without going over. Out on the edge you see all kinds of things you can’t see from the center.

Do you realize that all great literature is all about what a bummer it is to be a human being? Isn’t it such a relief to have somebody say that?

We are what we pretend to be, so we must be careful about what we pretend to be.

Like so many Americans, she was trying to construct a life that made sense from things she found in gift shops.

I have this disease late at night sometimes, involving alcohol and the telephone.

A person becomes great not be sitting on some high seat, but through higher qualities. Can a crow become an eagle by simply sitting on the top of a palatial building?

I have always cared about the Indian Rhinos & am speaking up for these mighty beings.

Learn to recognize the counterfeit coins that may buy you just a moment of pleasure, But then drag you for days like a broken man behind a farting camel.

Eating meat and drinking liquor are demonic vices. Those indulging in drink lose all sense of propriety, have no compassion or love and become demons.

The propensity to truck, barter and exchange one thing for another is common to all men, and to be found in no other race of animals.

Man, an animal that makes bargains.

Do not put your trust in rivers, men who carry weapons, beasts with claws or horns, women, and members of a royal family.

It is best to live with honor for just a day than with dishonor for many decades; better a short lived celestial swan than a century-lived crow.