Come here, cat. You wouldn’t want to destroy the space-time continuum, would you? Meow. Meow.

Cats, as you know, are quite impervious to threats.

Wrong, and wrong agains,’ he said. ‘The likeness is already there. The metaphor only sees it. And it is not a mere figure of speech. It is the very essence of our minds as we...

When you’re a writer, the question people always ask you is, “Where do you get your ideas?” Writers hate this question. It’s like asking Humphrey Bogart in The African Queen, “Where do you get your...

To do something for someone or something you loved- England or Shakespeare or a dog or the Hodbins or history- wasn’t a sacrifice at all. Even if it cost you your freedom, your life, your...

It was about a girl who helps an ugly old woman who turns out to be a good fairy in disguise. Inner values versus shallow appearances.

And every place and time an author writes about is imaginary, from Oz to Raymond Chandler’s L.A. to Dickens’s London.

She had been wrong in thinking Christ had been called up against his will to fight in a war. He didn’t look – in spite of the crown of thorns – like someone making a...

We live in hope that the good we do here on earth will be rewarded in heaven. We also hope to win the war. We hope that right and goodness will triumph, and that when...

Actually, writers have no business writing about their own works. They either wax conceited, saying things like: ‘My brilliance is possibly most apparent in my dazzling short story, “The Cookiepants Hypotenuse.”‘ Or else they get...

One of the nastier trends in library management in recent years is the notion that libraries should be ‘responsive to their patrons’.

Io suuicien lui damo amo,” she said softly. “You are here in place of the friends I love.

That’s what the movies do. They don’t entertain us, they don’t send the message: ‘We care.’ They give us lines to say, they assign us parts: John Wayne, Theda Bara, Shirley Temple, take your pick.

Books are an amazing thing. Anyone who thinks of them as an escape from reality or as something you should get your nose out of and go outside and play, or as merely a distraction...

It was the Communists, it was the Mexicans, it was the government. And the only people who acknowledged their guilt weren’t guilty at all.

Good. Drink your tea,” he ordered. “It will make you feel better.”Nothing will make me feel better, she thought, but she drank it down. It was hot and sweet. Mr. Humphreys must have put his...

Maybe the conference was an inversion layer of another kind, bringing me face-to-face with old friends and old places. With cancer and the Gap and the Old Man, railing about newfangled players and spicy food....

Thats what literature is. It’s the people who went before us, tapping out messages from the past, from beyond the grave, trying to tell us about life and death! Listen to them!

Management cares about only one thing. Paperwork. They will forgive almost anything else – cost overruns, gross incompetence, criminal indictments – as long as the paperwork’s filled out properly. And in on time.

What’s Management up to?” I whispered to Bennett.”My guess is a new acronym,” he whispered. “Departmental Unification Management Business.” He wrote down the ltters on his legal pad. “D.U.M.B.

Management is proving beyond a shadow of a doubt they don’t have enough to do,” she murmured back. “So they’ve invented a new acronym.

It is the end of the world. Surely you could be allowed a few carnal thoughts.

You’d help if you could, wouldn’t you, boy?” I said. “It’s no wonder they call you man’s best friend. Faithful and loyal and true, you share in our sorrows and rejoice with us in our...

…then inn a conversational tone said, “I slapped my Aunt Martha. When my fiancé died. She told me God needed him in heaven, and I hauled off and slapped her, a sixty year old woman….People...

Why do only the awful things become fads? I thought. Eye-rolling and Barbie and bread pudding. Why never chocolate cheesecake or thinking for yourself?