If desire did not dim the brain, nobody would ever get married, drunk, or fat. ~Val

Human beings do metamorphose. They change their identity constantly. However, each new identity thrives on the delusion that it was always in possession of the body it has just conquered.

This is what historians usually do, quibble about cause and effect when the point is, there are times when the world is in flux and the right voice in the right place can move the world. Thomas Paine and Ben Franklin, for instance. Bismark. Lenin.

It is possible to have words come to your mind, and still refrain from speaking them aloud.

I've got a pretty good idea what children are, and we're not children. Children can lose sometimes, and nobody cares.

But in the meantime I became accustomed to the writing life and it would be hard to change now - partly because of the salary cut if I went to my other love, teaching; and partly because I still have stories to tell, even though it isn't all that fun doing the work anymore.

He jumped at the Giants face, clambered up his lip and nose, and began to dig in the Giant's eye.