I like to think of myself as a fiction writer who liked art enough to write about it for a while, and then went on to his fiction.

Toys are made in heaven, batteries are made in hell.

Slavic peoples get their physical characteristics from potatoes, their smoldering inquietude from radishes, their seriousness from beets.

He who jokes in the executioners face can be destroyed, but never defeated.

Choice. It's the word that allows yes and the word that makes no possible. It's the word that puts the free in freedom and takes obligation out of the mix. It's the word upon which adventure, exhilaration, and authenticity depend. It's the word that the cocoon whispers to the caterpillar.

Christians, and some Jews, claim we're in the "end times," but they've been saying this off and on for more than two thousand years.

As any car freak will tell you, the old models are the most beautiful, even if they aren't the most efficient. People who sacrifice beauty for efficiency get what they deserve.