The only way to fight nostalgia is to listen to somebody else's nostalgia

The culture of drink endures because it offers so many rewards: confidence for the shy, clarity for the uncertain, solace to the wounded and lonely, and above all, the elusive promises of friendship and love.

What libraries give you is all three tenses - the past tense - the present tense in which we live and the future that we can only imagine. These places have teachers who are living and dead and we are lucky to have them. If I sit here and read Aristotle, he is speaking to me across a thousand years - more than a thousand years. That sense that I am in the company of the great greatest people who ever lived is a humbling experience but a liberating experience.

He tried to imagine the sound of the color red.

The best newspapermen I know are those most thrilled by the daily pump of city room excitements; they long fondly for a good murder; they pray that assassinations, wars, catastrophes break on their editions.

It's odd being an American now. Most of us are peaceful, but here we are again, in our fifth major war of this century.

One thing is certain: for many of those who came back from WWII, the music of Frank Sinatra was no consolation for their losses. Some had lost friends. Some had lost wives and lovers. All had lost portions of their youth. More important to the Sinatra career the girls started marrying the men who came home. Bobby socks vanished from many closets. The girls who wore them had no need anymore for imaginary lovers; they had husbands. Nothing is more embarrassing to grownups than the passions of adolescence, and for many, Frank Sinatra was the passion.