Addiction may be something to which some of us are predisposed, like diabetes, rather than a voluntary behavior — but it’s also reversible. A "diseas… - John Leonard

I don't have a sense of sanctuary. I don't have a place where I think I can go. I once went to the famous Kyoto temple with the Zen garden, the gravel, the little mounds and it's, you know, it's been pictured over and over and over again. And what they don't tell you is that this little acre or some acre of serenity is surrounded by millions of people taking pictures. So it sounds like a storm of mosquitoes constantly. And it never stops. And there's no serenity. And so not even in Japan can I find sanctuary.

It may be that the Greeks had it easy, with their light and their mountains and their plains and their islands waiting around for tourists. It was easy for them to believe that man fit in rather well. This fittingness may have given them the idea that we are seemlier than other evidence suggests. The heads of Rameses II at Abu Simbel and, for that matter, the skyscrapers of New York, have another idea of man. So do the artifacts of Albert Speer. It is depressing to wonder whether the Greeks just happened to be lucky, and the dream they left us is a lie about ourselves.

Suppose, deep down, you suspect that you are dull, and your public works are a form of vengeance. You talk a good poem, and think by numbers. Once upon a time, you were interesting; then Mother died and you had to give it up.