Like nature, our economic system remains, in the long run, stable and rational...We welcome the inevitable seasons of our economy! How foolish of us.

Can the imagination, any more than the boy, be held prisoner ?" - from the foreword to the 1976 edition of "The Painted Bird

Banks introduced the installment plan. The disappearance of cash and the coming of the credit card changed the shape of life in the United States.

All my life I've been hiding.

She seemed to belong to that pagan, primitive kingdom of birds and forests where everything was infinitely abundant, wild, blooming, and royal in its perpetual decay, death, and rebirth; illicit and clashing with the human world.

Gatherings and, simultaneously, loneliness are the conditions of a writer's life.

I write for a certain sphere of readers in the United States who on average watch seven and a half hours of multichannel television per day.