Everywhere you hang your hat is home. Home is the bright cave under the hat.

Africa has a genious for extremes, for the beginning and the end. It seems simultaneously connected to some memory of Eden and to some foretaste of apocalypse. Nowhere is day more vivid or night darker. Nowhere are forests more luxuriant. Nowhere is there a continent more miserable

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

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.

Not to forgive is to be imprisoned by the past, by old grievances that do not permit life to proceed with new business.

Human ingenuity has given centuries to the goal of ensuring that the human body might move around at an even 68 degrees all year.

Handwriting is civilization's casual encephalogram.