What makes 'The Lorax' such a powerful fable is partly its shamelessness. It pulls no punches; it wears its teacher heart on its sleeve.

As soon as a regular guy like Bill Clinton becomes the president, he wears a mantle of greatness. He's the president.

I'm not really the type of person who wears my heart on my sleeve. I keep everything inside.

I came to understand that a German nudist, in 1984, loved little more than to work on his or her tan.

I worry about the very pernicious way we elevate and separate ourselves from other beasts, the way we rationalize our comfort and ease, our worship of the self, as healthy. It's enticing, but with a terrible taint of evil.

Indeed, the hype around 'Watchmen' is its curse. If you want to enjoy the comic for what it is, ignore the attributions of literariness and the novelistic pretensions with which some critics have imbued it. This isn't high culture, and it doesn't pretend to be. It's good, juicy pulp fiction with a little nuclear apocalypse thrown in.