History is one of those marvelous and necessary illusions we have to deal with. It's one of the ways of dealing with our world with impossible generalities which we couldn't live without.

History is where tensions were.

When Robert Frost was alive, I was known as the other new England poet, which is to be barely known at all.

When you write it doesn't occur to you that somebody could think different from what you do.

Why are stamps adorned with kings and presidents? That we may lick their hinder parts and thump their heads.

I do insist on making what I hope is sense so there's always a coherent narrative or argument that the reader can follow.

Religion and science both profess peace (and the sincerity of the professors is not being doubted), but each always turns out to have a dominant part in any war that is going or contemplated.