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.

The town kept its secrets, and the Marsten House brooded over it like a ruined king.

When I was a kid I believed everything I was told, everything I read, and every dispatch sent out by my own overheated imagination. This made for more than a few sleepless nights, but it also filled the world I lived in with colors and textures I would not have traded for a lifetime of restful nights.

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

Humor is almost always anger with its make-up on.

Relief loosens tongues beyond measure.

I can't see the future, but it's grim. The depletion of resources - we're living in this dine-and-dash economy.