Revolutions Are The Periods Of History When

Great Hope Has No Real Footing Unless One Is Willing To Face Into The Doom That May Also Be On The Way. P.207

While I'm Working On A Book, I Rarely Read Anything More Than The New York Times. Which May Have The Long-term Effect Of Flattening My Style.

The Writer Can Grow As A Person Or He Can Shrink. ... His Curiosity, His Reaction To Life Must Not Diminish. The Fatal Thing Is To Shrink, To Be Interested In Less, Sympathetic To Less, Desiccating To The Point Where Life Itself Loses Its Flavor, And One’s Passion For Human Understanding Changes To Weariness And Distaste.

Love Asks Us That We Be A Little Braver Than Is Comfortable, A Little More Generous, A Little More Flexible. It Means Living On The Edge More Than We Care To.

I've Always Felt That My Relationship To The United States Is Analogous To A Marriage. I Love This Country. I Hate It. I Get Angry At It. I Feel Close To It. I'm Charmed By It. I'm Repelled By It. And It's A Marriage That's Gone On For Let's Say At Least 50 Years Of My Writing Life, And In The Course Of That, What's Happened? It's Gotten Worse. It's Not What It Used To Be.