These self-appointed deacons in the Church of Latter-Day American Literature seem to regard generosity (of words) with suspicion, texture with dislike, and any broad literary stroke with outright hate. The result is a strange and arid literary climate where a meaningless little fingernail paring like Nicholson Baker's Vox becomes an object of fascinated debate and dissection, and a truly ambitious American novel like Matthew's Heart of the Country is all but ignored.

It's as if God gave you something-all those stories- and said, "Here you are. Try not to lose it." But children lose everything unless somebody is there to help them, and if your parents are too stupid to do it, maybe i ought to.

You'll consider what you did wrong & bookend your reflections with hunger - no supper, no breakfast.

If it's OK to register cars and license drivers, why is it not OK to impose similar legal responsibilities on gun owners?

I think it is beyond doubt that H. P. Lovecraft has yet to be surpassed as the twentieth century's greatest practitioner of the classic horror tale.

Stories are artifacts, not really made things which we create and can take credit for, but pre-existing objects which we dig up.

If God gives you something you can do, why in God's name wouldn't you do it?