I rail against writers who talk about the loneliness of it all — what do they want, a crowd looking over their typewriters? Or those who talk about h… - Wilfrid Sheed

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

Chicago 1968 taught one how close any civilized country is to berserkness at all times; also how terrorism, even silly terrorism, strengthens the cops more than anyone. Yet already this European-style history lesson has been watered down by consensus into something crazy we did in the sixties, just as we "did" McCarthyism in the fifties. As if a nation changes its nature completely every ten years; as if social forces were as evanescent as hula hoops or skateboards, instead of as remorseless as glaciers.

Mankind has always made too much of its saints and heroes, and how the latter handle the fuss might be called their final test.