The lives of happy people are dense with their own doings -- crowded, active, thick. But the sorrowing are nomads, on a plain with few landmarks and no boundaries; sorrow's horizons are vague and its demands are few.

Americans don't want cowboys to be gay.

Most young dealers of the Silicon Chip Era regard a reference library as merely a waste of space. Old Timers on the West Coast seem to retain a fondness for reference books that goes beyond the practical. Everything there is to know about a given volume may be only a click away, but there are still a few of us who'd rather have the book than the click. A bookman's love of books is a love of books, not merely of the information in them.

... people are always turning out to be tougher than I think they are.

I don't do well with changes in my routine. I read at least three newspapers a day, for example. I'm frustrated if for some reason I can't get ahold of all three.

Mystery is underrated, and understanding is overrated.

Members of the Academy are mostly urban people. We are an urban nation. We are not a rural nation. It's not easy even to get a rural story made.