To break a promise is to deny the reality of the past. Therefore it is to deny the hope of a real future.

I think hard times are coming. We will need writers who can remember freedom. Poets, visionaries, the realists of a larger reality.

Abstractions about right and wrong, whether they are as old as Thou Shalt Not Kill or as modern as Do Your Own Thing, often serve only to confuse and weaken genuine moral decision.

What sane person could live in this world and not be crazy?

I have become very critical of the whole book award system and could preach on that subject for quite a while, but I do know what an award can mean to a writer early in her career. It can give an essential validation.

Freedom is a heavy load, a great and strange burden for the spirit to undertake. It is not easy. It is not a gift given, but a choice made, and the choice may be a hard one. The road goes upward towards the light; but the laden traveler may never reach the end of it.

The individual cannot bargain with the State. The State recognizes no coinage but power: and it issues the coins itself.