"Yes, we all live in a house on fire, no fire department to call; no way out, just the upstairs window to look out of while the fire burns the house down with us trapped, locked in it."

"Well, now I've said it, my son was looking for God. I mean for a clear image of Him. He spent that whole blazing equatorial day in the crow's nest of the schooner watching that thing on the beach of the Encantadas till it was too dark to see it, and when he came back down the rigging, he said, Well, now I've seen Him!—and he meant God . . ."

"And the sand all alive, all alive, as the hatched sea-turtles made their dash for the sea, while the birds hovered and swooped to attack and hovered and—swooped to attack! They were diving down on the hatched sea-turtles, turning them over to expose their soft undersides, tearing the undersides open and rending and eating their flesh."

"We saw the Encantadas, but on the Encantadas we saw something Melville hadn't written about."

"We're all of us sentenced to solitary confinement inside our own skins, for life!"

"You said, "They're harmless dreamers and they're loved by the people." — "What," I asked you, "is harmless about a dreamer, and what," I asked you, "is harmless about the love of the people? — Revolution only needs good dreamers who remember their dreams.""

"I know this place. … Here it is on the chart. Look, it says here: "Continue until you come to the square of a walled town which is the end of the Camino Real and the beginning of the Camino Real. Halt there," it says, "and turn back, Traveler, for the spring of humanity has gone dry in this place..."

"When so many are lonely as seem to be lonely, it would be inexcusably selfish to be lonely alone."

"The only thing worse than a liar is a liar that's also a hypocrite!"

"You'll be surprised how infinitely merciful they are. The prescription number is 96814. I think of it as the telephone number of God!"

"The tables have turned, yes, the tables have turned with a vengeance! You've come around to my old way of thinking and I to yours like two people exchanging a call on each other at the same time, and each one finding the other one gone out, the door locked against him and no one to answer the bell!"

"Eternity!—Didn't it give you the cold shivers?"

"The sort of life which I had previous to this popular success was one that required endurance, a life of clawing and scratching along a sheer surface and holding on tight with raw fingers to every inch of rock higher than the one caught hold of before, but it was a good life because it was the sort of life for which the human organism is created. I was not aware of how much vital energy had gone into this struggle until the struggle was removed. I was out on a level plateau with my arm still thrashing and my lungs still grabbing at air that no longer resisted. This was security at last. I sat down and looked about me and was suddenly very depressed."

"In 2002, Strom Thurmond, the unrepentant white supremacist and segregationist, turned one hundred years old. His birthday party was attended by then-president George W. Bush, among a roster of other political figures. Trent Lott, the Republican leader in the Senate, said in celebration, "I want to say this about my state [Mississippi]: When Strom Thurmond ran for president, we voted for him. We're proud of it. And if the rest of the country had followed our lead, we wouldn't have had all these problems over all these years, either." Segregation and Jim Crow had been part of Thurmond's platform during that campaign."

"Here is a Civil War movie that Trent Lott might enjoy."

"I want to say this about my state: When Strom Thurmond ran for president, we voted for him. We're proud of it. And if the rest of the country had followed our lead, we wouldn't have had all these problems over the years, either."

"I want the President to look across the country and find the best man woman or minority that he can find."

"I don't agree with the libertarians. I want my security first. I'll deal with all the details after that."

"Why do they kill people of other religions because of religion? Why do they hate the Israelis and despise their right to exist? Why do they hate each other? Why do Sunnis kill Shiites? How do they tell the difference? They all look the same to me."

"[Congress] is not the British Parliament, and I hope it never will become the British Parliament... Are we going to bring the president in here and have a question period like the prime minister has in Great Britain?"

"The filibuster of federal district and circuit judges cannot stand. … It's bad for the institution. It's wrong. It's not supportable under the Constitution. And if they insist on persisting with these filibusters, I'm perfectly prepared to blow the place up. No problem."

"I support the Kinder-Guardians program. We in America would be wise to implement it, too. It's something that we should think about, America, about putting guns in the hands of law-abiding citizens, good guys, whether they be teachers or whether they actually be talented children or highly-trained preschoolers."

"We don't need a lot of Jim DeMint disciples. As soon as they get here, we need to co-opt them."

"Any suggestion that a segregated past was acceptable or positive is offensive and it is wrong. Recent comments by Senator Lott do not reflect the spirit of our country. He has apologized and rightly so. Every day our nation was segregated was a day that America was unfaithful to our founding ideals, and the founding ideals of our nation, and in fact the founding ideals of the political party I represent, was and remains today the equal dignity and equal rights of every American."

"The spirit of Jefferson Davis lives in the 1984 Republican Platform."

"We need more meetings like this across the nation. The people in this room stand for the right principles and the right philosophy."

"I'm sure you petroleum folks understand that solar power will solve all our problems. How much money have we blown on that? This is the hippies' program from the seventies and they're still pushing this stuff."

"You could say that I favored segregation then. I don't now."

"I have made my condemnation of the white supremacist and racist view of this group, or any group, clear."

"This is not the way it has been done. We would never surprise each other … It's not to say that there's not important information that we could discuss or would be discussed in secret or closed session, but I'm astounded by this. I don't really know what the tenor of this is, what is the justification for it and why this extreme approach was used."

"I've already seen enough. Why would I want to go see a bunch of perverted pictures?"

"I am an advocate of having a gold dollar with Reagan's picture on it, and calling it the Ronnie. The Canadians have the Loonie, and we can have the Ronnie."

"There is a sort of an unwritten code in Washington, among the underworld and the hustlers and these other guys that I am their friend."

"We’ve got to do something about these Asians coming in, opening up businesses, those dirty shops. They ought to go. I’ll just say that right now, you know. But we need African American businesspeople to be able to take their places, too."

"The Irish caught hell, the Jews caught hell, the Polacks caught hell. We want Ward 8 to be the model of diversity."

"the mayor of Toronto, Rob Ford...The guy used crack cocaine, and he did his job. Despite what you think of him and his politics, but he came to work every day. He did his job. The same is true even of Marion Barry. He came to work every day, did his job. In fact, he did his job so well, so the people of D.C. thought, that they voted for him even after he was convicted for using crack. But that’s the majority of crack cocaine users. Just like any other drug, most of the people who use these drugs do so without a problem."

"They made all this up to justify questioning me. It's all made up. I don't know what happened. Whatever they say was all made up."

"Bitch set me up... I shouldn't have come up here... goddamn bitch."

"Outside of the killings, D.C. has one of the lowest crime rates in the country."

"Just as the Jews did after the Holocaust, never again will be allow this many murders in the streets of Washington, D.C. Never again."