I knew that I wanted to be a writer even before I knew exactly what being a writer entailed

We are all eaters of souls.

Those who ignore history's lessons in the ultimate folly of war are forced to do more than relive them ... they may be forced to die by them.

The Victorians, they were like the Germans in World War II. They could not stop recording details about their lives and their age.

Gass once wrote: "Language serves not only to express thought but to make possible thoughts which could not exist without it." Here is the essence of mankind's creative genius: not the edifices of civilization nor the bang-flash weapons which can end it, but the words which fertilize new concepts like spermatozoa attacking an ovum. It might be argued that the Siamese twin infants of word/idea are the only contribution the human species can, will, or should make to the raveling cosmos.

... all good things beyond sleep come precisely because we defy gravity while we live.

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