Ecstasy, I think, is a soul's response to the waves holiness makes as it nears.

Nature is, above all, profligate. Don't believe them when they tell you how economical and thrifty nature is, whose leaves return to the soil. Wouldn't it be cheaper to leave them on the tree in the first place? This deciduous business alone is a radical scheme, the brainchild of a deranged manic-depressive with limitless capital. Extravagance! Nature will try anything once.

I woke at intervals until . . . the intervals of waking tipped the scales, and I was more often awake than not.

For all the insularity of the old guard, Pittsburgh was always an open and democratic town.

Writers serve as the memory of a people. They chew over our public past.

It is difficult to undo our own damage, and to recall to our presence that which we have asked to leave.

I breathed the air of history all unaware, and walked oblivious through its littered layers.