Please learn the pragmatics of expressing fear: sometimes words that seem to express really invoke. This can be tricky.

It's in the democratic citizen's nature to be like a leaf that doesn't believe in the tree it's part of.

We are not dead but asleep, dreaming of ourselves.

In the broadest possible sense, writing well means to communicate clearly and interestingly and in a way that feels alive to the reader. Where there’s some kind of relationship between the writer and the reader - even though it’s mediated by a kind of text - there’s an electricity about it.

The interesting thing is why we're so desperate for this anesthetic against loneliness.

True heroism is minutes, hours, weeks, year upon year of the quiet, precise, judicious exercise of probity and care—with no one there to see or cheer. This is the world.

If you're writing fiction, you're dealing with characters who, themselves, will have heartfelt sentiments but who, themselves, live in this culture right now and thus face all the impediments to sort of dealing with those parts of their lives that, you know, that we did. So it would be not only silly but unrealistic to have a character saying that kind of stuff.