Thisbe Nissen
"If I'm really low, if I'm not doing well in my own life, maybe I want to sit down and go somewhere else. Maybe I want to write about a ridiculous family reunion in Nebraska, to not be in whatever my present emotion is."
W.D. Wetherell
"If you stopped to think about the ironies, you wouldn't get very far in any kind of media business in this day and age."
Ethan Canin
"You have to be pretty honest to be a fiction writer. You have to be smart enough to see the world for yourself and honest. The whole book-publicity thing is not really honest, at base."
Christopher Hitchens
"Punish the guilty. Do justice to the victims. It's not to ask very much. This is a rich society that won the Cold War. It has nothing to fear from this inquiry. That's what justice would look like."
Female Bodhisattva: A Poem
When you die, you will look back
upon the motley, hurley-burley carnival
with a tiny pentagram of wry compassion
in your open, trusting eye
A Literary Call to Arms
As human beings and writers, we are questioning the power of ink in altering the headline news. Some editors and publishers consider a literary call to arms a prerequisite, a necessary step in the global healing process; others find it a tacky, trite, and opportunistic maneuver toward personal publicity, rather like dressing up bloodshed for …
Very Little Sex & The City
When I first thought that my musings might be good fodder for a column, if nothing else than to serve as a public forum for my self-obsession, I immediately began worrying that people would think I was trying to emulate the very successful Candace Bushnell and her "Sex & The City" legacy, or at least …
Barbara Ehrenreich
"The rich know almost nothing about the poor. They don't clean their houses. Whereas the poor can turn on TV, not only house cleaners, and see how the rich live. And if you are a house cleaner you know exactly how individual rich people live."
Rushing Toward Entelechy: A Poem
Come sit with me, in valleys
of my shoulder blades,
whistle something in my ear
The Bag Lady: A Poem
No PC art could rescue her;
this thinness where thick plump belongs.