If novels and stories are bulletins from the progressive states of ignorance a writer passes through over the years, observations and opinions about horses are all the more so, since horses are more mysterious than life and harder to understand.

You know what getting married is? It's agreeing to taking this person who right now is at the top of his form, full of hopes and ideas, feeling good, looking good, wildly interested in you because you're the same way, and sticking by him while he slowly disintegrates. And he does the same for you. You're his responsibility now and he's yours. If no one else will take care of him, you will. If everyone else rejects you, he won't. What do you think love is? Going to bed all the time?

In many ways, being honest about 'Huckleberry Finn' goes right to the heart of whether we can be honest about our heritage and our identity as Americans.

Novelists of a conservative or more purely aesthetic bent hold up better on the surface, but their novels go in and out of fashion according to relevance or irrelevance.

Giving his lecture for the third time freed Dr. Lionel Gift from paying much attention to it. He had a naturally expressive style of delivery, hones over the years in elementary-econ lecture halls. He knew, without even thinking, to address the middle rows of the hall, but to occasionally "shoot" the listeners in the back corners. He knew how to make eye contact and solicit the attention of those who were thinking of other things.

The thing about Republicans is that they don't care so much about respect, but they love fear, at least in others.

Horse racing is really much more intimidating than anything having to do with literature. When I had horses at the racetrack, I would wake up in terror in a way that I would never wake up while working on a novel.