Doesn't anything socialistic make you want to throw up? Like great public schools, or health insurance for all?

And I urge you to please notice when you are happy, and exclaim or murmur or think at some point, 'If this isn't nice, I don't know what is.

Here's what I think the truth is: We are all addicts of fossil fuels in a state of denial, about to face cold turkey.

Human beings will be happier - not when they cure cancer or get to Mars or eliminate racial prejudice or flush Lake Erie but when they find ways to inhabit primitive communities again. That's my utopia.

If this isn't nice, I don't know what is.

There is no shortage of wonderful writers. What we lack is a dependable mass of readers.

Be a sadist. No matter how sweet and innocent your leading characters, make awful things happen to them in order that the reader may see what they are made of.