A lie hides the truth. A story tries to find it.

The truth came slowly like a story told by people interrupting each other.

we are, in this country, more open to new ideas. But we are also, it seems to me, more inclined to hail the new as absolute truth - until the next new comes along.

Labels not only free us from the obligation to think creatively; they numb our sensibilities, our power to feel. During the Vietnam War, the phrase body count entered our vocabulary. It is an ambiguous phrase, inorganic, even faintly sporty. It distanced us from the painful reality of corpses, of dead, mutilated people.

My father brought me a box of books once when I was about three and a half or four. I remember the carton they were in and the covers with illustrations by Newell C. Wyeth.

You'll see some bad things, but if you didn't see them, they'd still be happening.

My life was incoherent to me. I felt it quivering, spitting out broken teeth.