A good river is nature's life work in song.

La guerre, la guerre, everything la guerre. That's how I grew up. So for me, it's real. It's not something in the past.

'Freeing' a literary work into the public domain is less a public benefit than a transfer of wealth from the families of American writers to the executives and stockholders of various businesses who will continue to profit from, for example, 'The Garden Party,' while the descendants of Katherine Mansfield will not.

Of course, you would have to be insane to hope your child grows up to be a playwright or poet. Given the odds, you would have to be quite cavalier about your children's future.

Marxists are people whose insides are torn up day after day because they want to rule the world and no one will even publish their letter to the editor.

Lonely people have enthusiasms which cannot always be explained. When something strikes them as funny, the intensity and length of their laughter mirrors the depth of their loneliness, and they are capable of laughing like hyenas. When something touches their emotions, it runs through them like Paul Revere, awakening feelings that gather into great armies.

There is justice in the world, Peter Lake, but it cannot be had without mystery.