Fiction, poetry, music...these are the places (for me) where loneliness is countenanced, stared down, transfigured, treated.

And meteorologists have nothing to tell people in Philo, who know perfectly well that the real story is that to the west, between us and the Rockies, there is basically nothing tall, and that weird zephyrs and stirs joined breezes and gusts and thermals and downdrafts and whatever out over Nebraska and Kansas and moved like streams into rivers and jets at and military fronts that gathered like avalanches and roared in reverse down pioneer oxtrails, toward our own personal unsheltered asses.

Worship power - you will feel weak and afraid, and you will need ever ore power over others to keep the fear at bay. Worship your intellect, being seen as smart - you will end up feeling stupid, a fraud, always on the verge of being found out.

I have heard upscale adult U.S. citizens ask the ship's Guest Relations Desk whether snorkeling necessitates getting wet...I now know the precise mixocological difference between a Slippery Nipple and a fuzzy navel.

A novelist has to know enough about a subject to fool the passenger next to him on an airplane.

There is no hatred in my love for you. Only a sadness I feel all the more strongly for my inability to explain or describe it.

The entire ball game, in terms of both the exam and life, was what you gave attention to vs. what you willed yourself to not.