Reincarnation? There is such a thing. What could be more Mozartian than the Nutcracker Suite?
Mozart, striving for perfection, wrote the same symphony forty-one times. In his case, it worked. He wrote a perfect symphony.
In everything but brains and brawn, women are vastly superior to men. A different race.
Industrialism, whether of the capitalist or socialist coloration, is the basic tyrant of the modern age.
If there’s anything I hate, it’s the vibraphone. And the cha-cha-cha. And Latin rhythms generally.
We need wilderness whether or not we ever set foot in it. We need a refuge even though we may never need to go there. We need the possibility of escape as surely as we need hope.
As between the skulking and furtive poacher, who hunts for the sake of meat, and the honest gentleman shooter, who kills for the pleasure of sport, I find the former a higher type of humanity.
The night I filled an inside straight: Even a blind hog’s gonna root up an acorn once in a while.
When riding my old Harley a ninety per at midnight down the Via Roma in Naples, I kept one consolation firmly in mind: If anything goes wrong, I’ll never have time to regret it.
It’s true: Every time you kill an elk, you’re saving some cow’s life.
Tee Vee football: one team wins, one team loses – they tie – who cares? And why?
Music begins where words leave off. Music expresses the inexpressible. If there is a Kingdom of Heaven, it lies in music.
How did Haydn and Mozart produce such vast quantities of formally perfect art? They worked from a perfect formula. In music, Beethoven was the Great Emancipator.
Married couples who quarrel bitterly every day may really need each other as deeply as those who appear to be desperately in love.
I am happy to be a regional writer. My region is the American West, old Mexico, West Virginia, New York, Europe, Australia, the human heart, and the male groin.
Most of the literary classics are worth reading, if you’ve nothing better to do.
Platitude: a statement that denies by implication what it explicitly affirms.
There are only two kinds of books – good books and the others. The good are winnowed from the bad through the democracy of time.
Most new books drop immediately into the oblivion they so richly deserve.
Proust again: One can only wish that a man with such powers of total recall had led a less tedious life, moved among somewhat livelier circles...