I have written much about many good places. But the best places of all, I have never mentioned.

John Updike: our greatest suburban chic-boutique man of letters. A smug and fatal complacency has stunted his growth beyond hope of surgical repair. Not enough passion in his collected works to generate steam in a beer can. Nevertheless, he is considered by some critics to be America's finest *living* author: Hold a chilled mirror to his lips and you will see, presently, a fine and dewy moisture condensing -- like a faery breath! -- upon the glass.

Orthodoxy is a relaxation of the mind accompanied by a stiffening of the heart.

Why is it that the destruction of something created by humans is called vandalism, yet the destruction of something created by God is called development?

Music endures and ages far better than books. Books, made of words, are unavoidably attached to ideas, events, conflict, and history, but music has the power to transcend time. At least for a time. Palestrina sounds as fresh today as he did in 1555, but Dante, only three centuries older, already smells of the archaic, the medieval, the catacombs.

It's a fool's life, a rogue's life, and a good life if you keep laughing all the way to the grave.

The rich are not very nice. That's why they're rich.