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

Home is watching the moon rise over the open, sleeping land and having someone you can call to the window, so you can look together. Home is where you dance with others, and dancing is life.

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.

I am in trouble here. This woman is not right.

Only God gets things right the first time.

I'm still in love with what I do, with the idea of making things up, so hours when I write always feel like very blessed hours to me.

We never know which lives we influence, or when, or why. Not until the future eats the present, anyway. We know when it's too late.