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
Horror and panic themselves are forms of violence, and diminishing them, restricting their dimensions, is itself a civilizing act. — Walter Kirn Copy Share Image
No matter how you cut them, paste them, rotate them, or distort them, lip syncing and air-guitar playing are fundamentally foolish activities,… — Walter Kirn Copy Share Image
Novelists who pretend to understand what keeps them scribbling are really just guessing. A profound, unmet childish need to be acknowledged? Maybe.… — 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
There are two different forms of storytelling: Novels tend to come from the inside of a character, and movies tend to look… — 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
The fictionally correct have all the answers, and that's what's wrong with them. They're artistic technocrats. There's no dilemma so knotty, no… — 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
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
We're on Twitter with one side of our personality, and Facebook with another, and LinkedIn with another side of our personality, and… — Walter Kirn Copy Share Image
Statistics on the dangers guns pose to the health of their owners and those who live with them suggest that I'd be… — 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
