One way to escape the universe in which everything is a kind of media cartoon is to write about the part of your life that doesn't feel like a cartoon, and how the cartoon comes into it.

There's very little solid research on readership, yet people make pronouncements about it all the time.

The market doesn't make communities. Markets make networks of self-interested individuals, and they work as long as there's more than enough to go around.

In California we froze property taxes, school size increased, test scores declined, and there was a massive middle-class white flight to private schools. We're turning into Victorian England at a very rapid rate.

When I was in college, I lost my scholarship one year. I had enough money for tuition, but not room and board. So I camped in the hills.

Repetition makes us feel secure and variation makes us feel free.

I think it's true to say that in 1973 I could read every book of poems that was published in a year, and I did.