Lindsay calls them the Pugs: pretty from far away, ugly up close.
Would it be anything like a literary disaster if Gore Vidal were to fall silent? Easy. No. In fact, there is something to be said for the idea.
Leaders make things possible. Exceptional leaders make them inevitable.
Never forget the power of silence, that massively disconcerting pause which goes on and on and may last induce an opponent to babble and backtrack nervously.
People travel because it teaches them things they could learn no other way.
One can live with the thought of one's own death. It is the thought of the death of the words and books that is terrifying for that is the deeper extinction.
Not to forgive is to be imprisoned by the past, by old grievances that do not permit life to proceed with new business.
I am not the only one who did not want revenge. Almost all my colleagues in prison did not want revenge, because there is no time to do anything else except to try and save your people.
Laws are important and valuable in the exact natural sciences, in the measure that those sciences are universally valid.
The new leader is a facilitator, not an order giver.
A bolt from the blue.