Good drama should sandpaper the mind.

Good drama should sandpaper the mind.

the metabolism of a consumer society requires it continually to eat and excrete, every day throwing itself away in plastic bags.

Ireland is not at all a simple place, and in many ways it is spare and sad. It has no wealth, no power, no stability, no influence, no fashion, no size. Its only real arts are song and drama and poem. But Limerick alone has two thousand ruined castles and surely that many practicing poets.

A handwritten, personal letter has become a genuine modern-day luxury, like a child's pony ride.

Americans ought to be the best-traveled, most cosmopolitan people on earth, not only because experience of the world is desirable in its own right, but because as a people acquires a great concentration of power, worldliness becomes a moral imperative.

Huge herds of vigorous, curious, open-eyed Americans freely roaming the world are, it seems to me, quite possibly a vital national resource today as at no other time in our history.