Fathers are always so proud the first time they see their sons in uniform," she said. "I know Big John Karpinski was," I said. He is my neighbor to the north, of course. Big John's son Little John did badly in high school, and the police caught him selling dope. So he joined the Army while the Vietnam War was going on. And the first time he came home in uniform, I never saw Big John so happy, because it looked to him as though Little John was all straightened out and would amount to something. But then Little John came home in a body bag.

Every sentence must do one of two things-reveal character or advance the action.

What made marriage so difficult back then was yet again that instigator of so many other sorts of heartbreak: the oversize brain.

And what gift of America to the rest of the world is actually most appreciated by the rest of the world? It is African American jazz and its offshoots. What is my definition of jazz? Safe sex of the highest order.

Anything can make me stop and look and wonder, and sometimes learn.

When a man becomes a writer, I think he takes on a sacred obligation to produce beauty and enlighenment and comfort at top speed

Human beings are about 1,000 times dumber and meaner than they think they are.