What makes Iago evil? Some people ask. I never ask.

In the absence of a natural disaster we are left again to our own uneasy devices.

In the early years, you fight because you don't understand each other. In the later years, you fight because you do.

To assign unanswered letters their proper weight, to free us from the expectations of others, to give us back to ourselves--there lies the great, the singular power of self-respect. Without it, one eventually discovers the final turn of the screw: one runs away to find oneself, and finds no one at home.

Lancaster, California ... that promised land sometimes called 'the west coast of Iowa.

Some of us who live in arid parts of the world think about water with a reverence others might find excessive.

I found earthquakes, even when I was in them, deeply satisfying, abruptly revealed evidence of the scheme in action. That the schemes could destroy the works of man might be a personal regret but remained, in the larger picture I had come to recognize, a matter of abiding indifference. No eye was on the sparrow. No eye was watching me.