The first time I walked into a library, I got so excited I almost wet my pants.

Somebody informed me recently that the key to every art, from writing to gardening to sculpture, is creativity. I beg to differ.

Twiddle-twiddle away at my softly clicky keyboard for a while, making twiddly adjustments all along- and then print what I have twiddled. Glare at the printout and snarl and curse and scribble almost illegibly all over it with a ballpoint pen. Go back to the machine and enter the scribbles. Repeat this procedure until I hate the very meaning of every word I know.

Being president of too many well-meaning organizations put my father into an early grave. The lesson in this was not lost on me.

Any given generation gives the next generation advice that the given generation should have been given by the previous generation but now it's too late.

When money gets too far away from actual, physical, real equity and property it gets too abstract and too distantly derived and then suddenly it's not worth anything anymore. And the same is true of language.

The legendary yet factual Curtis Wilkie has been the right man in the right place at an uncanny number of extraordinary times.