A U. S. of modern A. where the State is not a team or a code, but a sort of sloppy intersection of desires and fears, where the only public consensus a boy must surrender to is the acknowledged primacy of straight-line pursuing this flat and short-sighted idea of personal happiness.

It is unimaginably hard to do this, to stay conscious and alive, day in and day out.

Fiction either moves mountains or it's boring; it moves mountains or it sits on its ass.

Tennis's beauty's infinite roots are self-competitive. You compete with your own limits to transcend the self in imagination and execution. Disappear inside the game: break through limits: transcend: improve: win.

The sun like a sneaky keyhole view of hell.

Lightfoot's voice is such a part of the fabric of Canada, I know it almost as well as I know my own voice.

We are who people think we are.