Most lives are spent putting on and taking off masks.

By and large, serious fiction was the work of victims who portrayed victims for an audience of victims who, it was oddly assumed, would want to see their lives realistically portrayed.

What we are is seldom what we want to be, while what we want to be is either denied us or changes with the seasons.

Although drugs are immoral and must be kept from the young, thousands of schools pressure parents to give the drug Ritalin to any lively child who may, sensibly, show signs of boredom in his classroom. Ritalin renders the child docile if not comatose. Side effects? "Stunted growth, facial tics, agitation and aggression, insomnia, appetite loss, headaches, stomach pains and seizures." Marijuana would be far less harmful.

For the average American, freedom of speech is simply the freedom to repeat what everyone else is saying and no more.

I was born a writer. When that happens, you have no choice in the matter.

The New York Times is the worst in that hardly anybody can write English over there. Most of it reads like slight translations from the German.