What you don’t know, you can’t tell. Or made to tell.

He pointed toward the silhouettes on the side of the [bathrooms] instead--black cutout man, black cutout woman. The man had his legs apart, the woman had hers together. Pretty much the story of the human race in sign language.

The idea that creative endeavor and mind-altering substances are entwined is one of the great pop-intellectual myths of our time.

Men who find themselves late are never sure. They are all the things the civics books tell us the good citizen should be: partisans but never zealots, respectors of the facts which attend each situation but never benders of those facts, uncomfortable in positions of leadership but rarely unable to turn down a responsibility once it has been offered . . . or thrust upon them. They make the best leaders in a democracy because they are unlikely to fall in love with power.

In the years since, I've discovered there's a lot to be said for boredom.

Writers must be fair and remember even bad guys (most of them, anyway) see themselves as good—they are the heroes of their own lives. Giving them a fair chance as characters can create some interesting shades of gray—and shades of gray are also a part of life.

True sorrow is as rare as true love.