When I was writing about the Republican primaries, it was as though the Bible was a black box that people reached into… — Walter Kirn Copy Share Image
We want to believe that we're invulnerable, and that people who get tricked deserve it. Well, they don't. And someday the arrogant… — Walter Kirn Copy Share Image
People can be so neglectful of each other and of their own heritage - then death intrudes. Conversations we wish that we'd… — Walter Kirn Copy Share Image
I say 'here's the thing' a lot, both to alert people that I'm about to say something important and to give myself… — Walter Kirn Copy Share Image
What is it in people, or just in people like me, that would rather let a lie go by, would rather wish… — Walter Kirn Copy Share Image
Guns can turn you into an insider even if you're an outsider by nature, recruiting you into a loose fraternity of people… — Walter Kirn Copy Share Image
Other people's devotions embarrassed me, perhaps because, like other people's kisses, they rarely looked genuine when viewed too closely. — Walter Kirn Copy Share Image
I think people get a sense of possibility when they're on a plane, even romantic possibility, wondering if the perfect person is… — Walter Kirn Copy Share Image
I read somewhere once that in the 1960s, fiction writers were troubled by the notion that life was becoming stranger and more… — Walter Kirn Copy Share Image
There are two sides to me. One is the writer. That's a savage person who looks at everything as a story and,… — Walter Kirn Copy Share Image
To young people born under the weird planet of the SAT, intelligence was equated with agility, with raw acuity. It produced a… — Walter Kirn Copy Share Image
My advice for aspiring writers is go to New York. And if you can’t go to New York, go to the place… — Walter Kirn Copy Share Image
The Bible has been through millions of rounds of exegesis and interpretation, but it hasn't been until quite recently that it's been… — Walter Kirn Copy Share Image
I have very specific advice for aspiring writers: go to New York. And if you can't go to New York, go to… — Walter Kirn Copy Share Image
Truth is stranger than nonfiction. And life is too interesting to be left to journalists. People have stories, but journalists have 'takes,'… — Walter Kirn Copy Share Image
I grew up in a little town in Minnesota, 500 people. I went out to Princeton, and I wasn't very well-accepted out… — Walter Kirn Copy Share Image
Realize that the game of life is the game of, to some extent, being taken advantage of by people who make a… — Walter Kirn Copy Share Image
Everyone loves a witch hunt as long as it's someone else's witch being hunted. — Walter Kirn Copy Share
“I just wasn't ready for his stories. They'd breed with the others I'd heard and hatch new monsters, because there was no such thing… — Walter Kirn Copy Share
It's no accident that most self-help groups use 'anonymous' in their names; to Americans, the first step toward redemption is a ritual wiping out… — Walter Kirn Copy Share
“For time to pass it would have to go somewhere, and where would that be? Time sits. We move, it sits. Sometimes it trembles… — Walter Kirn Copy Share
Once you realize just the sort of glut of books that exists out there, it does become incumbent on you not to add to… — Walter Kirn Copy Share
There are two sides to me. One is the writer. That's a savage person who looks at everything as a story and, you know,… — Walter Kirn Copy Share
I remember the first time I went to Italy when I was eighteen, I was in Florence and there were all these eighteen, nineteen,… — Walter Kirn Copy Share
The idea that Americans favor politicians who either remind them of themselves or can imagine what their selves are like because they too have… — Walter Kirn Copy Share
“Our habit of wishing backward from what is to what might have been is the soft but persistent tapping that cracks the crystal.” — Walter Kirn Copy Share
Memo to extreme partisans: If you can't bring yourselves to love your enemies, can you at least learn to hate your friends? — Walter Kirn Copy Share
People can be so neglectful of each other and of their own heritage - then death intrudes. Conversations we wish that we'd had earlier… — Walter Kirn Copy Share
I'd assumed that a deal was a deal when Princeton admitted me, but I was wrong. The price of getting in - to the… — Walter Kirn Copy Share
The reason that last-ditch political maneuvering has become business as usual in Washington is that the actors involved are drunk on blame and are… — Walter Kirn Copy Share
