“Literature had torn Tessa and me apart, or prevented us from merging in the first place. That was its role in the… — Walter Kirn Copy Share Image
Every generation looks at literature through the lens of their own experience, but with the Bible, everyone gets apprehensive and thinks it'll… — Walter Kirn Copy Share Image
If the future, as imagined in literature, is really the present taken to extremes, then the past is also the present, but… — Walter Kirn Copy Share Image
There are moments when it frightens us, threatening to expose us as inauthentic. Well, the big-time impostors we read about in literature… — Walter Kirn Copy Share Image
A writer has a use for his experiences that most civilians simply don't; he or she discerns material in situations that others… — Walter Kirn Copy Share Image
Size has nothing to do with literature. All legs are long enough to touch the ground, and all books are big enough… — Walter Kirn Copy Share Image
I had the impression from reading English literature that British women were great beauties, and I only had seen Julie Christie, and… — 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
