Slouching Towards Bethlehem: Essays

Keepers of private notebooks are a different breed altogether, lonely and resistant rearrangers of things, anxious malcontents, children afflicted apparently at birth with some presentiment of loss.

The impulse to write things down is a peculiarly compulsive one, inexplicable to those who do not share it, useful only accidentally, only secondarily, in the way that any compulsion tries to justify itself.

laconically.

although the men I have known have had many virtues and have taken me to live in many places I have come to love, they have never been John Wayne, and they have never taken me to that bend in the river where the cottonwoods grow. Deep in that part of my heart where the artificial rain forever falls, that is still the line I wait to hear.

so hot that August comes on not like a month but like an affliction;

she is a singularly blessed and accepting child, delighted with life exactly as life presents itself to her, unafraid to go to sleep and unafraid to wake up.

acrimony.

Nonetheless, character—the willingness to accept responsibility for one’s own life—is the source from which self-respect springs.

I think we are well advised to keep on nodding terms with the people we used to be, whether we find them attractive company or not.