All politicians know that every 'temporary' political initiative promised as a short-term poultice stays on the books forever.

We are so placid that the smallest tremor of objection to anything at all is taken as a full-scale revolution. Should any soul speak up in favor of the obvious, it is taken as a symptom of the influence of the left, the right, the pink, the black, the dangerous. An idea for its own sake - especially an obvious idea - has no respectability.

What I felt then I feel now: the inexorable, unchanging interior hum of doubt and hope.

If ideas are what feed serious literature and arresting language, who today is writing a novel of ideas (which can often mean comedy)? I think of Joshua Cohen. Who else?

literature is an instrument of a culture, not a summary of it.

Wars, invented and organized by the highest available consciousnesses (do the worms go to war? do the fish? do the paramecia?), are the planet's chief source and cause of torment.

It is true that money attracts; but much money repels.