No one can be as intellectually slothful as a really smart person

A person could see a lot without ever leaving his own living room. Especially if he had the right tools.

you must not come lightly to the blank page.

By writing a horror novel where this inexplicable disorder takes over in our ordered lives, you make order look better by comparison. But below that, there's a part of us that responds to the Who bashing their instruments to pieces on the stage. There's a very primitive part that says, "Do it some more."

What charitable 1 percenters can't do is assume responsibility - America's national responsibilities: the care of its sick and its poor, the education of its young, the repair of its failing infrastructure, the repayment of its staggering war debts.

And she sees that the moonlight is losing its orange glow. It has become buttery, and will soon turn to silver.

Sometimes life coughs up coincidences no writer of fiction would dare copy.