“If you don't have a whole lot of unsatisfied people, the economy stops dead, doesn't it?”

“Right now, the economy is a whole lot like a fairly good-looking brain-dead chick in a persistent vegetative coma. You can't really wake her up, but there's things she's still good for.”

“I do an awful lot of thinking and dreaming about things in the past and the future - the timelessness of the rocks and the hills - all the people who have existed there. I prefer winter and fall, when you feel the bone structure of the landscape - the loneliness of it, the dead feeling of winter. Something waits beneath it, the whole story doesn't show.”

“Now do you see why war irritates me? It's always the same. A lot of people get killed, but in the end, the whole thing is settled at the conference table. The notion of having the conference first doesn't seem to occur to people.”

“The whole problem with people is they don't know what matters and what doesn't.”

“You’ll know the economy is dead when industry stops and escalators turn into stairs. That’ll be the day slinkies take over the world.”