The odds on any intelligent person having an unhappy childhood are better than fair, and the odds on a sad ending are practically off the board. - Wilfrid Sheed

His interviewing self is, or was, an extra person, like the Holy Ghost, generated by self-contemplation.

It is possible that the malice of writers has been overrated (by myself among others). Reading their ruminations on their craft, one sees why this writer could not possibly like that one, would indeed consider him a menace. Literature is a battleground of conflicting faiths, and nobler passions than envy are involved.

The one kind of society that the Church cannot adjust to is no society at all, i.e., a setup where community has become so fragmented that a communal religion is a fiction, sustained only by talk and make-news items in the press and television.