Simply As A Writer Of Books I'm

In The City One Clings To Nostalgic And Unreal Signs Of Community, Takes Forced Refuge In Codes, Badges And Coteries; The City's Life, Of Surfaces And Locomotion, Usually Seems Too Dangerous And Demanding To Live Through With Any Confidence.

Life, As The Most Ancient Of All Metaphors Insists, Is A Journey; And The Travel Book, In Its Deceptive Simulation Of The Journey's Fits And Starts, Rehearses Life's Own Fragmentation. More Even Than The Novel, It Embraces The Contingency Of Things.

Lincoln, Steeped In The Bible And Shakespeare, Set An Impossibly High Bar For Presidential Prose.

The City Has Always Been An Embodiment Of Hope And A Source Of Feeling Guilt; A Dream Pursued, And Found Vain, Wanting, And Destructive.

Simply As A Writer Of Books I'm Thrilled And Proud That Seattle Should Have Raised, On A Public Vote, Sufficient Money To Build A Central Library, And Moreover To Rebuild Every Other Library In The City: 28 Of Them.