I've written about Powers Hapgood. He was a Harvard graduate, son of a wealthy family who owned a cannery out there. After leaving Harvard, he went to work in coal mines and then was a CIO executive when I met him there, in Indianapolis.

But I replied that what made being alive almost worthwhile for me, besides music, was all the saints I met, who could be anywhere. By saints I meant people who behaved decently in a strikingly indecent society.

Rome wasn't built in a day.

It is so short and jumbled and jangled, Sam, because there is nothing intelligent to say about a massacre. Everybody is supposed to be dead, to never say anything or want anything ever again. Everything is supposed to be very quiet after a massacre, and it always is, except for the birds. And what do the birds say? All there is to say about a massacre, things like "Poo-tee-weet?

We used to have superb public schools. I guess we don't anymore, but, boy, the public schools were really something and I am a product of those in Indianapolis.

Any reviewer who expresses rage and loathing for a novel is preposterous. He or she is like a person who has put on full armor and attacked a hot fudge sundae.

Because we grew up surrounded by big dramatic story arcs in books and movies, we think our lives are supposed to be filled with huge ups and downs. So people pretend there is drama where there is none.