But it is a writer's duty to write and speak and record the truth, always the truth, no matter whom may be offended.

Reincarnation? There is such a thing. What could be more Mozartian than the Nutcracker Suite?

Saving the world is only a hobby. Most of the time I do nothing.

I now find the most marvelous things in the everyday, the ordinary, the common, the simple and tangible.

It's all still there in heart and soul. The walk, the hills, the sky, the solitary pain and pleasure-they will grow larger, sweeter, lovelier in the days and years to come.

One day in Dipstick, Nebraska, or Landfill, Oklahoma, is worth more to me than an eternity in Dante's plastic Paradiso, or Yeats's gold-plated Byzantium.

The best people, like the best wines, come from the hills.