Religious canons, civil laws, are cruel; then what should war be?
Aurelie Sheehan's absorbing stories have depth miles beneath their compelling surface. They radiate a wisdom, beauty and originality rare in contemporary fiction.
Someone once told me years ago that there was nothing so dead as a warmed-over love affair.
I think we all recognize that one of the problems in American culture is that increasingly, there's no middle ground. That either you're a celebrity writer or a celebrity poet, or else you're nothing.
When you are out of favor, so to speak, it's not just the reviewers. It's the editors, the publishers, they don't want you anymore, you're just gone and you've been written out of history as effectively as the old Stalinists would write someone else out, take their photograph out of a book.
Whether one becomes famous or not, you have to be reminded of people like Melville, who for the last thirty years of his life was completely unknown. He worked in a customs house and walked off to work as an anonymous person in this American culture.
If you're not happy, if you're not Emmersonianly happy and think everything's going to get better, then you're just sort of a dark animal.
If you have HIV, I don't think there's anything to be ashamed of. Get treatment and don't think that you're out of options or resources because you're not.
The Iraq war took priority over domestic disaster prevention.
I was a repertory actor, which meant that I did a play every week. I was a different character every week; for a year, I was doing 40 or 50 characters.
The Chinese say it's better to be deprived of food for three days than tea for one.