There is no such thing as a homosexual or a heterosexual person. There are only homo- or heterosexual acts. Most people are a mixture of impulses if not practices.

Of course, it is possible for any citizen with time to spare, and a canny eye, to work out what is actually going on, but for the many there is not time, and the network news is the only news even though it may not be news at all but only a series of flashing fictions.

The creation of a work of art, like an act of love, is our one small 'yes' at the center of a vast 'no.'

You hear all this whining going on, "Where are our great writers?" The thing I might feel doleful about is: Where are the readers?

Write what you think, what you imagine, what you suspect!

We affect one another quite enough merely by existing. Whenever the stars cross, or is it comets? fragments pass briefly from one orbit to another. On rare occasions there is total collision, but most often the two simply continue without incident, neither losing more than a particle to the other, in passing.

The United States is my subject, but as Hawthorne once wrote, "the United States are suited for many admirable purposes, but not to live in."