I don't think he was knowable. I mean, when most people talk about knowing somebody a lot or a little, they're talking about the secrets they've been told or haven't been told. They're talking about intimate things, family things, love things," that nice old lady said to me. "Mr. Hoenikker had all those things in his life, the way every living person has to, but they weren't the main things with him.

You realize, of course, that everything I say is horseshit.

He is in a constant state of stage fright, he says, because he never knows what part of his life he is going to have to act in next

Suicide is the punctuation mark at the end of many artistic careers

So the America I loved still exists, if not in the White House or the Supreme Court or the Senate or the House of Representatives or the media. The America I love still exists at the front desks of our public libraries.

She was a dull person, but a sensational invitation to make babies.

Make war not on terrorism but on ignorance, on sickness and on environmental degradation.