At GQ, there was never a temptation to pander or preach to the choir because I had no concept of who the reader was or what that reader might want.

Not watching TV gets me in a lot of trouble in my household because my wife and daughter have a lot of shows they like to watch.

Ireland starts for me with the end of The Dead, which my father read to me from his desk in his basement office in New Albany, Ind.

We live in such constant nearness to the abyss of past time that the moment is endlessly sucked into.

What’s old doesn’t need to be old-fashioned. It gets reborn.

Reporting provides reminders that things are always more complicated than you think.

It is a curious fact that the word essayist showed up in English before it existed in French.

Freaky things happen all the time in the world. I suppose everything has to happen for the first time at some point.

The city of Cork - the urban center, where all the shops and bars and everything are - is actually an island, a river island.

A good writer wants from us — or has no right to ask more than — intelligence, good faith and time.

I'm just saying, take courage. That and pretty much that alone is never the incorrect thing to do.

Science and spirituality are not opposed entities that try to claim ownership of the universal truth but rather different layers of awareness about this world.

What they never tell you about grief is that missing someone is the simple part.

Children see things very well sometimes-and idealists even better.

America is the civilization of people engaged in transforming themselves. In the past, the stars of the performance were the pioneer and the immigrant. Today, it is youth and the Black.

Part of our good consists in the endeavor to do sorrows away, and in the power to sustain them when the endeavor fails,--to bear them nobly, and thus help others to bear them as well.

The task is not done. The journey is not complete. We can and we must do more.

Life with God is an individual matter, and general formulas do not easily apply.

A birdie with a yellow bill Hoped upon the window sill, Cocked his shining eye and said: 'Ain't you 'shamed, you sleepy-'ead?