Sophistication" is another word for that inventive mix of tolerance, resilience, and resourcefulness city people develop.

Once I climbed into a mountain lion's cage and she bounded at me and put her paw on my face, but she kept her claws withdrawn.

City people try to buy time as a rule, when they can, whereas country people are prepared to kill time, although both try to cherish in their mind's eye the notion of a better life ahead.

Poetry is engendered in solitude, so what better meter for it than the clip of a buckskin horse?

We New Yorkers see more death and violence than most soldiers do, grow a thick chitin on our backs, grimace like a rat and learn to do a disappearing act. Long ago we outgrew the need to be blowhards about our masculinity; we leave that to the Alaskans and Texans, who have more time for it.

A writer's work is to witness things.

The question of whether it's God's green earth is not at center stage, except in the sense that if so, one is reminded with some regularity that He may be dying.