In every death is a celebration; in every ecstasy, one little death.

The sole virtue of losing your short-term memory is that it does free you to be your own editor.

If only gravity were working, the path would be symmetrical, it is the wind resistance that produces the tragic curve.

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

Since great writers communicate a vision of existence, one can't borrow their methods. The method is married to the vision.

The Barry Goldwater movement excited the depths because the apocalypse was brought more near, and like millions of other whites, I had been leading a life which was a trifle too pointless and a trifle too full of guilt and my gullet was close to nausea with the empty promises of an empty liberal center.

I was thinking that surgeons had to be the happiest people on earth. To cut people up and get paid for it-that's happiness, I told myself.