We're each of us alone, to be sure. What can you do but hold your hand out in the dark?

I gather that a lot of the "pots" in the great museum in Baghdad, which we allowed to be looted and then gutted, are now for sale to the highest bidder on the art and archeology black market. This is good capitalism, I guess, while a museum, being a public trust and accessible to all, is anticapitalist, pretty damn near socialist in fact.

To see a candle's light, one must take it into a dark place. This is the same as to see the good and be grateful, one must compare and contrast it with something worse - not better!

Manhood is patience. Mastery is nine time patience

This is the treason of the artist: a refusal to admit the banality of evil and the terrible boredom of pain.

Skill in writing frees you to write what you want to write. It may also show you what you want to write. Craft enables art.

The backside of heroism is often rather sad; women and servants know that. They know also that the heroism may be no less real for that. But achievement is smaller than men think. What is large is the sky, the earth, the sea, the soul.