Aphorisms are bad for novels. They stick in the reader's teeth.

Lapped in poetry, wrapped in the picturesque, armed with logical sentences and inalienable words.

We are all tourists in history, and irony is what we win in wars.

Rome was a poem pressed into service as a city.

The tension between "yes" and "no," between "I can" and "I cannot," makes us feel that, in so many instances, human life is an interminable debate with one's self.

When friends stop being frank and useful to each other, the whole world loses some of its radiance.

The epic implications of being human end in more than this: We start our lives as if they were momentous stories, with a beginning, a middle and an appropriate end, only to find that they are mostly middles.

It is one of the paradoxes of American literature that our writers are forever looking back with love and nostalgia at lives they couldn't wait to leave.

There was a time when we expected nothing of our children but obedience, as opposed to the present, when we expect everything of them but obedience.

The more I like a book, the more slowly I read. this spontaneous talking back to a book is one of the things that makes reading so valuable.

Aphorisms are bad for novels. They stick in the reader's teeth.

People have no idea what a hard job it is for two writers to be friends. Sooner or later you have to talk about each other's work.

To be misunderstood can be the writer's punishment for having disturbed the reader's peace. The greater the disturbance, the greater the possibility of misunderstanding.

There is something about seeing real people on a stage that makes a bad play more intimately, more personally offensive than any other art form.

The tension between 'yes' and 'no', between 'I can' and 'I cannot', makes us feel that, in so many instances, human life is an interminable debate with one's self.

An aphorism is a generalization of sorts, and our present-day writers seem more at home with the particular.

The epic implications of being human end in more than this We start our lives as if they were momentous stories with a beginning a middle and an appropriate end only to find that they are mostly middles.

When friends stop being frank and useful to each other the whole world loses some of its radiance.

The tension between "yes" and "no", between "I can" and "I cannot", makes us feel that, in so many instances, human life is an interminable debate with one's self.

Aphorisms are the true form of the universal philosophy.

Someone who can write aphorisms should not fritter away his time in essays.

Our live experiences, fixed in aphorisms, stiffen into cold epigrams. Our heart's blood, as we write it, turns to mere dull ink.

The great writers of aphorisms read as if they had all known each other well.

There are aphorisms that, like airplanes, stay up only while they are in motion.

Aphorisms are bad for novels. They stick in the reader's teeth.

Life holds one great but quite commonplace mystery. Though shared by each of us and known to all, seldom rates a second thought. That mystery, which most of us take for granted and never think twice about, is time.

Your daily life is your temple and your religion. When you enter into it take with you your all.

The dictionary is the only place that success comes before work. work is the key to success, and hard work can help you accomplish anything.

Bottom line: I can relax in L.A. I think I'm the only person in that town who doesn't want to act. I was an OK singer. I was an OK dancer. But acting? Never could do it.

My party is committed to a federation.

I didn't go to church all the time, just 'cause I was an antsy kid.

My highest priority is the safety of all Oregonians and their communities.

I'm running against a woman who's got David Axelrod and Rahm Emanuel running her campaign.

I would say that Barack Obama has always been a real optimist about what can be accomplished. He believes that government can be used to create systemic, long-term, real change. And the first lady is more of a skeptic.

The United States of America - once great, grand and free - is on the path to becoming just another country.

Assuming a specific resource is high cost is often a path to disruption when someone makes a different assumption.

All legitimate government is a mutual insurance company, voluntarily agreed upon by the parties to it, for the protection of their rights against wrong-doers. In its voluntary character it is precisely similar to an association for mutual protection against fire or shipwreck.

I just work every day.

One of my favorite stories is from Obama's first campaign: Michelle Obama was out there every day, collecting signatures and supervising the other people who did. If you were supposed to get 300 signatures and you only got 299, you had to face the wrath of Michelle.

I'm an actor. I love to create.

First you learn a new language, profanity; and second you learn not to discipline your dogs when you're mad, and that's most of the time when you're training dogs.

We live in this thought web; we identify things and put them away and distance ourselves from them. But to be completely present? That is source, that is art, that is spirituality. And meditation is a way to defy fear and experience that source.

As medical research continues and technology enables new breakthroughs, there will be a day when malaria and most all major deadly diseases are eradicated on Earth.

If you compare NASA's annual budget to explore the heavens, that one year budget would fund NOAA's budget to explore the oceans for 1,600 years.

I would much rather watch a horror film or science fiction than a comedy. I don't know why. I just like them. I find them relaxing.

It never mattered to me that people in school didn't think that country music was cool, and they made fun of me for it - though it did matter to me that I was not wearing the clothes that everybody was wearing at that moment. But at some point, I was just like, 'I like wearing sundresses and cowboy boots.'

The unimaginable always becomes the unforgettable.

When something that occupies a giant space in your life comes to an end, then you have to go through a mourning period. I loved 'The Shield.' It was one of the hardest and one of the greatest experiences of my life. But having said that, I'm always thinking about what's next.

Perfect courage is to do without witnesses what one would be capable of doing with the world looking on.