Walter Kirn

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

— 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…

— 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…

— Walter Kirn

“For time to pass it would have to go somewhere, and where would that be? Time sits. We move, it sits. Sometimes…

— Walter Kirn

Once you realize just the sort of glut of books that exists out there, it does become incumbent on you not to…

— 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,…

— Walter Kirn

I remember the first time I went to Italy when I was eighteen, I was in Florence and there were all these…

— Walter Kirn

Quiet cunning bested boastful brawn

— Walter Kirn

The idea that Americans favor politicians who either remind them of themselves or can imagine what their selves are like because they…

— Walter Kirn

“Our habit of wishing backward from what is to what might have been is the soft but persistent tapping that cracks the…

— 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

People can be so neglectful of each other and of their own heritage - then death intrudes. Conversations we wish that we'd…

— Walter Kirn

I'd assumed that a deal was a deal when Princeton admitted me, but I was wrong. The price of getting in -…

— 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…

— Walter Kirn

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

— Walter Kirn

“Liars are exhausting people.”

— Walter Kirn

Other people's devotions embarrassed me, perhaps because, like other people's kisses, they rarely looked genuine when viewed too closely.

— Walter Kirn

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

“people, including types that I didn’t like much at all but felt I had something to learn or to gain from.”

— Walter Kirn

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

“Though I no longer liked him or respected him, the thought of his disapproval frightened me.”

— Walter Kirn

Horror and panic themselves are forms of violence, and diminishing them, restricting their dimensions, is itself a civilizing act.

— Walter Kirn

“You long for a windfall that will let you quit and pursue your great hobby”

— Walter Kirn

Ask Jeeves! Who ever used that thing? College freshmen to find out who Goethe was - that's it.

— Walter Kirn

I've been told my old city possesses a 'thriving arts scene,' whatever that is; personally, I think artists should lie low and…

— Walter Kirn