Life is all memory, except for the one present moment that goes by you so quickly you hardly catch it going.
Amoebas, once they have themselves well pulled in two, go their ways-they practice divorce, but no remarriage.
If language is intimately related to being human, then when we study language we are, to a remarkable degree, studying human nature.
Jazz was formerly a crude term for indulging in an action which in polite society is referred to, if at all, only with such vague Latin terms as intercourse and cohabitation.
The great arbiters of language are the women who speak it in the presence of children. . . What the women pass on to the next generation is "right" and what they do not bother to pass on to their children sooner or later becomes "wrong.
Babies and language are the essential ingredients of civilization, and speakers of language no more know where it came from than babies know where they come from.
You and I who read and write books have very little effect upon language. We may think about it, write about it, and read about it, but it goes on without us, or in spite of us.
I've always wanted to be bald. I mean it, completely bald. Wouldn't it be great to be bald in the rain?
To joke in the face of danger is the supreme politeness, a delicate refusal to cast oneself as a tragic hero.
The people we live with and work with on a daily basis deserve our full attention. When we give people segmented attention, piecemeal time, switching back and forth, the switching cost is higher than just the time involved. We end up damaging relationships.
In politics. . . never retreat, never retract. . . never admit a mistake.