Why, after all, must everyone like music? That they are missing something is just the lover's opinion.

To start writing about your life is, from one standpoint, to stop living it. You must avoid adventures today so as to make time for registering those of yesterday.

Art means to dare - and to have been right.

If asked to list my ten favorite American fiction writers, Gail Godwin would be among them. In this, her latest . . . she evokes in a short book the long married life of two artists. Evenings at Five is a strong tale of love-after-death.

As a lifelong pacifist, Quaker, and a gay man, I despair that gays and lesbians are expending energy trying to get into the military when they should be using that same energy getting rid of the military completely.

The art of translation lies less in knowing the other language than in knowing your own.

Artists, by definition innocent, don't steal. But they do borrow without giving back.