The Church became both more accessible and less imposing. It threw itself open to risk.

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.

As they marched, the crowds lining the route broke into applause, a sweet and deeply felt spontaneous pattering that was a sort of communal embrace. Welcome home.

Abstinence is a window of clarity through which one can better find one's work and one's mate.

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

Handwriting is civilization's casual encephalogram.