For 40 years we were led to think of the Russians as godless, materialistic and an evil empire. When the Cold War ended, we suddenly discovered that Russia was a poor Third World country. They had not been equipped to take over the world. In fact, they were just trying to improve a miserable standard of oppressive living, and couldn't. They had to spend too much on arms build-up. We didn't win the Cold War; we bankrupted the Russians. In effect, it was a big bank exhausting the reserves of a smaller one.

Crude thoughts and fierce forces are my state. I do not know who I am. Nor what I was. I cannot hear a sound. Pain is near that will be like no pain felt before.

Masculinity is not something given to you, but something you gain. And you gain it by winning small battles with honor.

Because there is very little honor left in American life, there is a certain built-in tendency to destroy masculinity in American men.

I guess all that's left is to love the fire.

The novelist ... must live in paranoia and seek to be one with the world; he must be terrified of experience and hungry for it; he must think himself nothing and believe he is superior to all.

In my day the library was a wonderful place.... We didn't have visual aids and didn't have various programs...it was a sanctuary.... So I tend to think the library should remain a center of knowledge.