Trouble Defies The Law Of Gravity. It's

One Classic American Landscape Haunts All Of American Literature. It Is A Picture Of Eden, Perceived At The Instant Of History When Corruption Has Just Begun To Set It. The Serpent Has Shown His Scaly Head In The Undergrowth. The Apple Gleams On The Tree. The Old Drama Of The Fall Is Ready To Start All Over Again.

One Of The Oddest Features Of Western Christianized Culture Is Its Ready Acceptance Of The Myth Of The Stable Family And The Happy Marriage. We Have Been Taught To Accept The Myth Not As An Heroic Ideal, Something Good, Brave, And Nearly Impossible To Fulfil, But As The Very Fiber Of Normal Life. Given Most Families And Most Marriages, The Belief Seems Admirable But Foolhardily.

Travel. It Was An Intransitive Verb. It Didn't Involve Any Destinations. It Was Going To The Going's Sake, To Be Anywhere But Where You Were, With Motion Itself As The Only Object.

My New City [seattle] And Its Hinterland Felt Deceptively Homely. Their Similar Latitude Gave Them The Angular Light And Lingering Evenings I Was Used To. Their Damp Marine Weather, Blowing In From The Southwest, Came In The Right Direction. When The Mountains Are Hidden Under A Low Sky, One Might Almost Imagine Oneself To Be In Britain.

No President Has Come Near To Rivaling Lincoln As A Writer.