There was an otherworldly quality about him, the aura of one privy to secret communiques in forgotten languages.

[...] as Kurt Vonnegut pointed out [...] the literary novel has become extraordinarily privatistic of late. It's as if the big issues (Does God exist? from whence springs decency? what sort of species is Homo Sapiens?) were either settled or not worth discusssing, and serious writers should therefore confine themselves to their various ethnic heritages and interpersonal relationships.

There are no atheists in foxholes" isn't an argument against atheism, it's an argument against foxholes.

The next time somebody announces that he plans to get Medieval on your ass, tell him you're going to get Renaissance on his gonads.

Eccentricity is not, as dull people would have us believe, a form of madness. It is often a kind of innocent pride, and the man of genius and the aristocrat are frequently regarded as eccentrics because genius and aristocrat are entirely unafraid of and uninfluenced by the opinions and vagaries of the crowd.

ECCENTRICITY, n. A method of distinction so cheap that fools employ it to accentuate their incapacity.