Freedom Is A Public Library.

We Are, In This Country, More Open To New Ideas. But We Are Also, It Seems To Me, More Inclined To Hail The New As Absolute Truth - Until The Next New Comes Along.

There Was No Way To Grasp The Reality Of The Present Which Slid Away Each Second, Invisible As Air; Reality Only Existed After The Fact, In One's Vision Of The Past.

Families Hold Each Other In An Iron Grip Of Definition. One Must Break The Grip, Somehow.

Labels Not Only Free Us From The Obligation To Think Creatively; They Numb Our Sensibilities, Our Power To Feel. During The Vietnam War, The Phrase Body Count Entered Our Vocabulary. It Is An Ambiguous Phrase, Inorganic, Even Faintly Sporty. It Distanced Us From The Painful Reality Of Corpses, Of Dead, Mutilated People.

A Good Novel Begins With A Small Question And Ends With A Bigger One.