Don't know what hurts me more, talking or not talking to him.

The life wont follow your path. You're not God.

What deserves my loyalty, art or prestige?

they will give you a kiss maybe but after a while they will bite your heart

[Castellani's testimony] clearly illustrates the concern we have that there is no way to separate the efforts to proselytize from the efforts to reform people.

I shall die in the belief that to make France free, republican and prosperous, a little ink would have sufficed - and only one guillotine.

I knew we were in for a long season when we lined up for the national anthem on opening day and one of my players said, 'Every time I hear that song I have a bad game.'

For the last half of my life I have had the doubtful benefit of a brother whose literary reputation is much greater than my own.

Success can breed contempt, and a casual attitude toward danger.

A language is not just words. It's a culture, a tradition, a unification of a community, a whole history that creates what a community is. It's all embodied in a language.

Everybody's life has these moments, where one thing leads to another. Some are big and obvious and some are small and seemingly insignificant.

Tom Kealey might be my favorite short story writer and this astonishing collection is long overdue.

Ignorance and arrogance are a lethal combination. Nowhere do we see that more clearly among writers and performers who pontificate as historians when they know nothing about history.