The success that Americans are said to worship is success of a specific sort: accomplished not through hard work, primarily, but through… — Walter Kirn Copy Share Image
Yes, in the commercial world there's room for both McDonald's and Whole Foods, but in the realm of politics, we're told, it's… — Walter Kirn Copy Share Image
I'd assumed that a deal was a deal when Princeton admitted me, but I was wrong. The price of getting in -… — Walter Kirn Copy Share Image
A sociopath doesn't warm up their environment, doesn't make it cozy. They don't have to; when they're not performing, when they're not… — 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
The least sexy city is Los Angeles. And it poses as the most sexy. As you grow up, L.A. is being sold… — 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
When we have a favorite writer, it's always the places where they grew up, lived, worked, and that they recreated on the… — 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
The room-service Caesar salads with soggy croutons, the distant relatives who show up at readings pitching weird, far-fetched investment schemes, the fans… — 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
