At best Americans give but a limited attention to history. Too much happens too rapidly, and before we can evaluate it, or exhaust its meaning or pleasure, there is something new to concern us. Ours is the tempo of the motion picture, not that of the still camera, and we waste experience as we wasted the forest.

Everywhere I've turned somebody has wanted to sacrifice me for my own good—only /they/ were the ones who benefited. And now we start on the old sacrificial merry-go-round. At what point do we stop?

Man's hope can paint a purple picture, can transform a soaring vulture into a noble eagle or moaning dove.

Injustice wears ever the same harsh face wherever it shows itself.

The act of writing requires a constant plunging back into the shadow of the past where time hovers ghostlike.

The clock ticked with empty urgency, as though trying to catch up with the time. In the street a siren howled.

And while the ice was melting to form a flood in which I threatened to drown I awoke one afternoon to find that my first northern winter had set.