Heavy blizzards start as a gentle and persistent snow.

World War II is the war that made our world. There's no question about that. The history of all the years in which I will spend my life, every single one, that is the seminal event of the history that we will experience.

People's position on immigration, once they get "sophisticated," and they rise to the higher levels of commentary or government, it's usually determined solely by economics. And not by anything else.

It's very painful to be in debt. I'm the kind of person who would rather almost die than go into debt.

You’ll join me sooner than you know in a place with . . . no illusions, where the truth is the only architecture, the only color, the only sound--where that which we sense merely on occasion, and which takes us up and gives us the rare and beautiful glimpses of the things we truly love, flows in deep rivers and tumbles about like clouds in the sky.

I'm sort of murdered for selling books. The idea is, if you make money your work can't be literary.

I have been fighting over commas all my life.