Bad books always lie. They lie most of all about the human condition.

Americans are the nicest, most generous, and sentimental people on earth. Yet Americans have killed more unborn children than any nation in history.

Life is fits and starts, mostly fits.

The enduring is something which must be accounted for. One cannot simply shrug it off.

Losing hope is not so bad. There's something worse: losing hope and hiding it from yourself.

It is possible, however, that the artist is both thin-skinned and prophetic and, like the canary lowered into the mine shaft to test the air, has caught a whiff of something lethal.

This Midwestern sky is the nakedest loneliest sky in America. To escape it, people live inside and underground.