Sometimes fear is a warning. It's like someone putting a hand on your shoulder and saying Go No Farther.

The thing should have plot and character, beginning, middle and end. Arouse pity and then have a catharsis. Those were the best principles I was ever taught.

But during all these years I had a vague but persistent desire to return to New Orleans. I never forgot New Orleans. And when we were in tropical places and places of those flowers and trees that grow in Louisiana, I would think of it acutely and I would feel for my home the only glimmer of desire I felt for anything outside my endless pursuit of art.

I assume as a child Jesus had to learn how to do carpentry, learn Torah, learn all the things a human child had to learn. If He was human in all ways except that He did not sin, this must have been the case.

Words. Borne on the ever swelling current of hatred, like flowers opening in the current, petals peeling back, then falling apart.

Very few beings really seek knowledge in this world. Mortal or immortal, few really ASK. On the contrary, they try to wring from the unknown the answers they have already shaped in their own minds.

It is tragic that many in America think of us - Christians - as being people who hate others.