There is a misconception of tragedy with which I have been struck in review after review, and in many conversations with writers and readers alike. It is the idea that tragedy is of necessity allied to pessimism.

They know your name, address, telephone number, credit card numbers, who ELSE is driving the car "for insurance", ... your driver's license number. In the state of Massachusetts, this is the same number as that used for Social Security, unless you object to such use. In THAT case, you are ASSIGNED a number and you reside forever more on the list of "weird people who don't give out their Social Security Number in Massachusetts."

A character is defined by the kinds of challenges he cannot walk away from. And by those he has walked away from that cause him remorse.

In America, any man who is not a reactionary in his views is open to the charge of alliance with the Red hell.

How to live had started out as an analytical problem of how to place himself so as to intercept the flow of money in the society.

In the theater, while you recognized that you were looking at a house, it was a house in quotation marks. On screen, the quotation marks tend to be blotted out by the camera.

HALE, with a tasty love of intellectual pursuit