...the indispensable requirement for a good newspaperman - as eager to tell a lie as the truth.

A democracy depends upon people getting brighter all the time. Democracies are delicate. They're not just ipso facto and just go on and on.

We sail across dominions barely seen, washed by the swells of time. We plow through fields of magnetism. Past and future come together on thunderheads and our dead hearts live with lightning in the wounds of the Gods.

Mailer's Law: A thing either gets better or it costs more to run it the way it was.

The essence of spirit ... was to choose the thing which did not better one's position but made it more perilous. That was why the world he knew was poor, for it insisted morality and caution were identical.

In America all too few blows are struck into flesh. We kill the spirit here, we are experts at that. We use psychic bullets and kill each other cell by cell.

MIke Lee writes with honesty, penetration, wit and the ability to surprise the reader with an unexpected turn from time to time that enriches the experience.