The people who make reality are angry peasants with old cannon shells wired together, an anti-vehicle device.

People do not read, by and large. They watch television.

What to know about pain is how little we do to deserve it, how simple it is to give, how hard to lose.

The culture is with some rapidity fearing its imagination. I don't know why. Imagination is not of interest.

The education of young people is narrowing. They cannot have the scope they used to have. They are being taught in high school by people earnest, still, but maybe less well-prepared than we would want them to be - but not because they are stupid or churlish.

The importance to the world of what we scribblers write is in doubt, I would think.

Nonfiction, for the most part, is facts, and it's "how I was mistreated. I was mistreated. Were you mistreated? Weren't we all mistreated?"