Words are catch-basins of experience, fingerprints and footprints of the past that the literary detective may scrutinize in order to sleuth out the history of human consciousness.

Yet the organic label itself—like every other such label in the supermarket—is really just an imperfect substitute for direct observation of how a food is produced, a concession to the reality that mo...

You always fed strays and bent down to talk to the dogs you met on the street, looking straight into their eyes as if they were old friends. (Maybe they are, you said. From another life.) You liked to...

You know your Bible too well and life too little.

You want to know what I'm afraid of? All right, I'll tell you. I'm afraid of men - yes, I'm very much afraid of men. And I'm even more afraid of women. And I'm very much afraid of the whole bloody hum...

Why be an ostrich?

Why should I have to hide the fact that I don't believe there’s a supreme being? There’s no proof of it. There’s no harm in saying you’re an atheist. It doesn't mean you treat people any differently....

Y la normalidad de la vida retome su curso, dejando las víctimas tras de sí, según es uso y costumbre.

¡Oh noche! ¡Oh refrescantes tinieblas! ¡Sois para mí señal de fiesta interior, sois liberación de una angustia! ¡En la soledad de las llanuras, en los laberintos pedregosos de una capital, centelleo d...

أنت تسافر ولكنك لم تترك منزلك بعد ما دمنا معاً، وستظل على هذه الحال؛ فإلى جانبك شخص يعرفك، وهذا يمنعك حساً زائفاً من الألفة. آن الأوان لتتابع وحدك، وقد تجد الوحدة ثقيلة الوطأة وتفوق الاحتمال، ولكن سيز...

You’re a queer?That’s exactly what I am. I didn’t choose to be.After a while Woody put his arm around Chuck’s shoulders.Well, what the hell, he said. At least you’re not a Republican.

[Conservation] Barring that, just yell at people randomly to stop killing whales. It could catch on. Really.(Would you like fries with that?Shut up and stop killing whales!Thank you. Drive through, pl...

A single outburst does not produce a difficult relational environment. It is only when a parent [or anyone] repeatedly and regularly uses anger to close conversations, in the broadest sense of 'conver...

If I have become my father, then I shall have my father's blade. Thorn is my dragon, and a thorn he shall be to all enemies. It is only right, then, that I should wield the sword, misery. Misery and T...

If I'm still wistful about On the Road, I look on the rest of the Kerouac oeuvre--the poems, the poems!--in horror. Read Satori in Paris lately? But if I had never read Jack Kerouac's horrendous poems...

I also believe my home state is cursed by ignorance and poverty and racism, much of it deliberately inculcated to control a vulnerable electorate. And I believe many of the politicians in Louisiana ar...

I am trying really hard not to use the word 'fabulous' right now.

Hay gente que pregunta: ¿Por qué usar la palabra feminista? ¿Por qué no decir simplemente que crees en los derechos humanos o algo parecido?. Pues porque no sería honesto. Está claro que el feminismo...

Hay que estar siempre ebrio. Nada más: ése es todo el asunto. Para no sentir el horrible peso del Tiempo que os fatiga la espalda y os inclina hacia la tierra, tenéis que embriagaros sin tregua. Pero,...

He knew he could worm his way beneath her defenses—he’d read every word of those diaries. He knew the one absolute way to fulfill her every dream. The problem was, could he do that to her? He didn’t h...