“Of all the words of mice and men, the saddest are, It might have been.”

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.

Beware of the man who works hard to learn something, learns it, and finds himself no wiser than before.

There are too many of us and we are all too far apart.

What white man has ever seen me drunk? Who has ever come to me hungry and left me unfed? Who has seen me beat my wives or abuse my children? What law have I broken?

Science, my boy, is composed of errors, but errors that it is right to make, for they lead step by step to the truth.

Father asked us what was God’s noblest work. Anna said men, but I said babies. Men are often bad, but babies never are.

Franco will bring the army from Castille. The ambassador will complain, causing a schism. Rivera’s men will be part of the force. The great man will be denied entry to the gulf.

There is for a man two things in life that are very important, head and shoulders above everything else. Find work you like, and find someone to live with you like. Very few people get both.

What joins men together is not the sharing of bread but the sharing of enemies.

Articulate words are a harsh clamor and dissonance. When man arrives at his highest perfection, he will again be dumb.

A man’s bewilderment is the measure of his wisdom.