For those at home, as well as for those in battle, war is curiously disabling. The mere realization that one's country is at war poisons the bloodstream, creates an incessant mood of worry that infiltrates even the most casual moments.

Blame is especially useful in situations in which there is no apparent villain-those moments that prove, despite our advancement of learning, how susceptible we are to high winds and wet roads.

Children love to be alone because alone is where they know themselves, and where they dream.

Why, for example, do the great writers use anticipation instead of surprise? Because surprise is merely an instrument of the unusual, whereas anticipation of a consequence enlarges our understanding of what is happening.

The best in art and life comes from a center - something urgent and powerful, an idea or emotion that insists on its being. From that insistence, a shape emerges and creates its structure out of passion. If you begin with a structure, you have to make up the passion, and that's very hard to do.

When you have the goods, you don't need to dress up what you're writing.

Uncle Scrooge preferred to let the poor die "and decrease the surplus population." Scrooge may not have had God on his side, but his arithmetic was impeccable.