There has never been an 'original' sin: each is quite banal.

Only a fool would leave the enjoyment of rainbows to the opticians. Or give the science of optics the last word on the matter.

The death penalty would be even more effective, as a deterrent, if we executed a few innocent people more often.

Walking is the only form of transportation in which a man proceeds erect -- like a man -- on his own legs, under his own power. There is immense satisfaction in that.

Going to bed with Gertrude Stein, Jeane Kirkpatrick, Susan Sontag, or Margaret Thatcher: There are some things one prefers neither to do nor to have done.

Humankind will not be free until the last Kremlin commissar is strangled with the entrails of the last Pentagon chief of staff.

Science is the whore of industry and the handmaiden of war.

Original sin, the true original sin, is the blind destruction for the sake of greed of this natural paradise which lies all around us -- if only we were worthy of it.

Nearly all of Latin America, from Chile to Mexico, is one long rack of torture. Financed, equipped, and refined by the U.S. government.

Most of us lead lives of chaotic improvisation from day to day, bawling for peace while plunging grimly into fresh disorders.

I know my own nation best. That's why I despise it the most. And know and love my own people, too, the swine. I'm a patriot. A dangerous man.

The national parks belong to everyone. To the people. To all of us. The government keeps saying so and maybe, in this one case at least, the government is telling the truth. Hard to believe, but possible.

I would like to evoke the sense of wonder and magic in the reader but without invoking the mystical, the supernatural or the transcendent.

I'm a humanist; I'd rather kill a man than a snake.

Somewhere in the depths of solitude, beyond wilderness and freedom, lay the trap of madness.

In the modern world, all literary art is necessarily political -- especially that which pretends not to be.

If the end does not justify the means -- what can?

Anywhere, anytime, I'd sacrifice the finest nuance for a laugh, the most elegant trope for a smile.

Nobody has so many friends that he can afford to lose one.

Once upon a time, I dreamed of becoming a great man. Later, a good man. Now, finally, I find it difficult enough and honor enough to be -- a man.