Reliving his degradation had struck some spark in him and…

Everyone loves a witch hunt as long as it's someone else's witch being hunted.

— Walter Kirn

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

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

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

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

“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

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

Quiet cunning bested boastful brawn

— Walter Kirn

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

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

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

“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

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

“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

“Meanness on request isn't meanness at all, but kindness carried too far.”

— Walter Kirn