Nothing helps an artist's career more than a little death and obscurity.

The truth is, it's not a great career move to create a readership and then, in effect, abandon them.

Any allegiance to a deity or concept or universal principal which put obedience above decent behavior toward an innocent human being evil.

It occurs to me that our survival may depend upon our talking to one another.

It started 25 years ago, when I was teaching elementary school in a small town in Missouri

To see and feel one's beloved naked for the first time is one of life's pure, irreducible epiphanies. If there is a true religion in the universe, it must include that truth of contact or be forever hollow. To make love to the one true person who deserves that love is one of the few absolute rewards of being a human being, balancing all of the pain, loss, awkwardness, loneliness, idiocy, compromise, and clumsiness that go with the human condition. To make love to the right person makes up for a lot of mistakes.

The never-ending competition between writers hasn't changed between 1868 and 2000. I used to belong to writers' workshops with other professionals, but that becomes impossible after a while. Everyone's on a different step of the career ladder. Jealousy doesn't have to erupt into murder and burying someone in Wells Cathedral, but it is always there.