The idea that Americans favor politicians who either remind them of themselves or can imagine what their selves are like because they… — Walter Kirn Copy Share Image
I like to think that I could praise the good book of someone I personally dislike. I try not to comment on… — Walter Kirn Copy Share Image
Good short-story collections, like good record albums, are almost always hit-and-miss affairs - successful if they include three or four great tracks,… — 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
If writers, like comedians or singers, could only hear themselves bombing as they worked, it's likely that certain books would be cut… — Walter Kirn Copy Share Image
In America, to be ID'd - sorted, tagged, and permanently filed - is to lose a bit of one's soul. To die… — Walter Kirn Copy Share Image
I review books as a day job, and through the years I've come to view the contemporary memoir as, almost always, a… — Walter Kirn Copy Share Image
Cross the wrong state border with your gun, or wake up one morning to new legislation or a new presidential executive order,… — Walter Kirn Copy Share Image
A president, like a college freshman, can't know in advance which questions he'll have to answer or what topics he'll have to… — Walter Kirn Copy Share Image
In fourth grade, I learned that reading was serious business, not just a pleasant way to pass the time, and that like… — Walter Kirn Copy Share Image
When I shoot at the range, I don't feel personally powerful but like the custodian of something powerful. I feel like a… — Walter Kirn Copy Share Image
I love reference books, especially collections of memorable quotations, world almanacs, and atlases. Facts to me are like candy or popcorn, small,… — Walter Kirn Copy Share Image
I've noticed that the few times I've traveled first class myself, you've already got your drink, and your coat has been taken… — Walter Kirn Copy Share Image
A true nature is a gloomy monolith, sort of like that old black rotary phone that I had to sing 'Happy Birthday'… — 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 Image
“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 Image
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 Image
“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 Image
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 Image
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 Image
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 Image
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 Image
“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 Image
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 Image
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 Image
