We want someone to bring us the news.

That's what I can't stand. I know I'll bounce back, and that's what I can't stand.

He was doing missionary work. But from the outset he had little success in convincing his charges of their responsibility for a sin committed at the beginning of creation, one which, as they understood it, they were ready and capable (indeed, they carried charms to assure it) of duplicating themselves. He did no better convincing them that a man had died on a tree to save them all: an act which one old Indian, if Gwyon had translated correctly, regarded as "rank presumption".

It is the bliss of childhood that we are being warped most when we know it the least.

Tragedy was foresworn, in ritual denial of the ripe knowledge that we are drawing away from one another, that we share only one thing, share the fear of belonging to another, or to others, or to God; love or money, tender equated in advertising and the world, where only money is currency, and under dead trees and brittle ornaments prehensile hands exchange forgeries of what the heart dare not surrender.

There is nothing more distressing or tiresome than a writer standing in front of an audience and reading his work.

Why do you treat me as they do, as though I were exactly what I want to be. Why do we treat people that way?