A rattlesnake loose in the living room tends to end all discussion of animal rights.

The kiss is a wordless articulation of desire whose object lies in the future, and somewhat to the south.

Walter Duranty helped to turn the monster Stalin into a world figure and a hero of the leftistWestern intelligentsia by defending the bloodbath of the Soviet Union from its critics in the now famous: "You can't make an omelette without breaking eggs.

Would it be anything like a literary disaster if Gore Vidal were to fall silent? Easy. No. In fact, there is something to be said for the idea.

The busybodies have begun to infect American society with a nasty intolerance - a zeal to police the private lives of others and hammer them into standard forms - A Nation of Finger Pointers.

The real 1960s began on the afternoon of November 22, 1963. It came to seem that Kennedy's murder opened some malign trap door in American culture, and the wild bats flapped out.

A day cannot live in infamy without the nourishment of rage. Let's have rage.