Here is a lesson in creative writing. First rule: Do not use semicolons. They are transvestite hermaphrodites representing absolutely nothing. All they do is show you've been to college.

And we all vied, in saving face, to be the greatest student of human nature, the person with the quickest sense of humor.

The only way to get anything out of a writer's brains is to leave him or her alone until he or she is damn well ready to write it down.

Plato, by the way, wanted to banish all poets from his proposed Utopia because they were liars. The truth was that Plato knew philosophers couldn't compete successfully with poets.

I'm a painter in my dreams, you know.

Literature is by definition opinionated. It is bound to provoke the arguments in many quarters, not excluding the hometown or even the family of the author.

Armistice Day has become Veterans' Day. Armistice Day was sacred. Veterans' Day is not.