“I have often wished I had time to cultivate modesty...But I am too busy thinking about myself.”

“Eccentricity is not, as some would 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 an...”

“I wish the government would put a tax on pianos for the incompetent.”

“My personal hobbies are reading, listening to music, and silence.”

“Answers I kept my answers small and kept them near;Big questions bruised my mind but still I letSmall answers be a bullwark to my fear.The huge abstractions I kept from the light;Small things I han...”

“All day long you sit and sew,Stitch life down for fear it grow,Stitch life down for fear we guessAt the hidden ugliness.Dusty voice that throbs with heat,Hoping with your steel-thin beatTo put stit...”

“In this age, the mere example of non-conformity, the mere refusal to bend the knee to custom, is itself a service. Precisely because the tyranny of opinion is such as to make eccentricity a reproac...”

“There was a time when a new deputy tried to teach Mr. Fruit about the difference between a red and a green light, but Mr. Fruit had resisted all efforts to reorder what he had been doing perfectly ...”

“Clancy comments that the subtleties of national character can impact the world stage by making espionage more difficult. Americans were quirky by nature, making the sorts of eccentric moves that ha...”