I lived in New York for a couple months. It seemed to me at first an incredibly clean place with well-dressed people and washed cars and bright-painted red-and-yellow streetcars and white buildings.

Writing is immensely difficult. The short forms especially.

Someone dying asks if there is life after death. Yes, comes the answer, only not yours.

The difference between Socrates and Jesus is that no one had ever been put to death in Socrates' name. And that is because Socrates' ideas were never made law. Law, in whatever name, protects privilege.

Children have a lot more to worry about from the parents who raised them than from the books they read.

If you feel a bump on page one hundred, it may be you went off on page fifty.

Whenever citizens are seen routinely as enemies of their own government, writers are rountinely seen to be the most dangerous enemies.