Wars and elections are both too big and too small to matter in the long run. The daily work - that goes on, it adds up.

The artist deals with what cannot be said in words. The novelist says in words what cannot be said in words.

Bitter words normally evaporate with the moisture of breath, after a quarrel. In order to become permanent, they require transcribers, reporters, complicit black hearts.

There is a strange moment in time, after something horrible happens, when you know it's true, but you haven't told anyone yet.

A careless way of sauntering across the earth and breaking open its treasures, a terrible dependency on sucking out the world's best juices for ourselves-these may also be our enemies. The changes we dread most may contain our salvation.

A first child is your own best foot forward, and how you do cheer those little feet as they strike out. You examine every turn of flesh for precocity, and crow it to the world. But the last one: the baby who trails her scent like a flag of surrender through your life when there will be no more coming after--oh, that' s love by a different name.

The last generation's worst fears became the next one's B-grade entertainment.