A young writer is easily tempted by the allusive and ethereal and ironic and reflective, but the declarative is at the bottom of most good writing.

Ralph Stanley is like an uncle to us and now that all my uncles are gone, Ralph's singing is even more precious. This album of classic folk songs is one of his best.

When you're in your 20s, your 30s, even, you have - at least, I had - vast ambitions, and you sit around mooning about these things, and you're depressed, because you haven't done them. And it takes you a long time to come to the realization that if you can't be John Updike, well, then, you can't.

As for kissing on the first date, you should never date someone whom you would not wish to kiss immediately.

A book is a gift you can open again and again.

Easter is so disappointing. You suffer all the way through lent, and what do you get for it? A ham.

That's what I am, Frank thought, an ordinary genius. He had unlocked the secret of radio. The sport of the ordinary! Brillliant me like Reed Seymour couldn't figure this out for the life of them! Reed was ashamed of radio. ...radio was a cinch if you kept reaching down and grabbing up handfuls of the ordinary.