Writers are lampposts and critics are dogs. Ask lampposts what they think about dogs. Does the dog hurt the lamppost?

Israel is a pretty crazy state.

House guests should be regarded as perishables: Leave them out too long and they go bad.

Of the four wars in my lifetime, none came about because the U.S. was too strong.

This morning I lay in the bathtub thinking how wonderful it would be if I had a dog like Rin Tin Tin. I’d call him Rin Tin Tin too, and I’d take him to school with me, where he could stay in the janitor’s room or by the bicycle racks when the weather was good.

Military justice is to justice what military music is to music.

Outside of a dog, a book is a man’s best friend. Inside of a dog it’s too dark to read.

A correct answer is like an affectionate kiss.

My idea is always to reach my generation. The wise writer writes for the youth of his own generation, the critics of the next, and the schoolmasters of ever afterward.

People do not make wars; governments do.

If you’re trying to create a company, it’s like baking a cake. You have to have all the ingredients in the right proportion.

Pakistan will never be able to match the Indian militarily, and the effort to do so is taking an immense toll on the society.

War does not determine who is right – only who is left.

When younger writers and poets, musicians and painters are weakened by a stemming of funds, they come to me saddened, not as full of dreams and excitement and ideas. I am then weakened and diminished, and made less rich.

We are not trying to entertain the critics. I’ll take my chances with the public.

Too often we… enjoy the comfort of opinion without the discomfort of thought.

I’ve seen a look in dogs‘ eyes, a quickly vanishing look of amazed contempt, and I am convinced that basically dogs think humans are nuts.

Israelis would mostly breathe a sigh of relief if Palestinians were to disappear.

A war is a horrible thing, but it’s also a unifier of countries.

Like it or not, there are a lot of dance teachers in this country who respect me, whether they personally like me or not.

I tend to approach things from a physics framework. And physics teaches you to reason from first principles rather than by analogy.

Music is not math. It’s science. You keep mixing the stuff up until it blows up on you, or it becomes this incredible potion.

Trump has no sense of shame.

I believe in universal health care. And I am not afraid to say so.

That which is not good for the bee-hive cannot be good for the bees.

I think the idea of art kills creativity.

Obviously, I’m no fan of the radical left.

The most dangerous word in any human tongue is the word for brother. It’s inflammatory.

Criticism is prejudice made plausible.

Facts are not interesting to me.

I have been asked what would I ban immediately if I could. Advertising.

Anything popular is populist, and populist is rarely a good adjective.

‚Bombing Afghanistan back into the Stone Age‘ was quite a favourite headline for some wobbly liberals. The slogan does all the work. But an instant’s thought shows that Afghanistan is being, if anything, bombed out of the Stone Age.

You pick up some fans and a handful of haters along the way.

In Japan, the writers have made up a literary community, a circle, a society. I think 90 percent of Japan’s writers live in Tokyo. Naturally, they make a community. There are groups and customs, and so they are tied up in a way.

We all hoped in 2001 that we could put in place an Afghan government under President Karzai that would be able to control the country, make sure al-Qaeda didn’t come back, and make sure the Taliban wasn’t resurging. It didn’t work out.

Opinion has caused more trouble on this little earth than plagues or earthquakes.

I hate violence, yes I do. It’s kind of a dilemma, huh?.

Home life is no more natural to us than a cage is natural to a cockatoo.

If you talk bad about country music, it’s like saying bad things about my momma. Them’s fightin‘ words.

The U.S. couldn’t even get rid of Saddam Hussein. And we all know that the EU is just a passing fad. They’ll be killing each other again in less than a year. I’m sick to death of all these fascist lawsuits.

Everybody has a job to do. There are people in Iraq on both sides of this war who do what they do for religious reasons, and they feel with God on their side. Some people are good at annihilating people. Maybe that’s their gift.

In time of war the laws are silent.

Prime Minister Maliki, released from American restraint, acted on his worst instincts, creating enormous distrust in Iraq’s Kurdish population and deeply embittering Sunnis in western Iraq’s Al Anbar, who lost any confidence in a Baghdad government they saw as adversarial.

The rule is perfect: in all matters of opinion our adversaries are insane.

I don’t envy or much respect people who are completely politicised.

Not everybody is comfortable with the idea that politics is a guilty addiction. But it is.

War grows out of the desire of the individual to gain advantage at the expense of his fellow man.

Marriage is like a game of chess except the board is flowing water, the pieces are made of smoke and no move you make will have any effect on the outcome.

Of course, there are those critics – New York critics as a rule – who say, ‚Well, Maya Angelou has a new book out and of course it’s good but then she’s a natural writer.‘ Those are the ones I want to grab by the throat and wrestle to the floor because it takes me forever to get it to sing. I work at the language.

How could man rejoice in victory and delight in the slaughter of men?

A countryman between two lawyers is like a fish between two cats.

I see the world in black and white, and I don’t like compromising.

Originality is nothing but judicious imitation. The most original writers borrowed one from another.

I don’t do research. I never have.

The British soldier can stand up to anything except the British War Office.

The dog that trots about finds a bone.

I think ‚Invisible‘ is a great song, but I don’t know how accessible it is.

This is not Johnson’s war. This is America’s war. If I drop dead tomorrow, this war will still be with you.

My opinion is it’s a bridge too far to go to fully autonomous cars.

The truth of the matter is that Iran is a cancer.