It's possible, in a poem or a short story, to write about commonplace things and objects using commonplace but precise language, and to endow those things-- a chair, a window curtain, a fork, a stone, a woman's earring-- with immense, even startling power. It is possible to write a line of seemingly innocuous dialogue and have it send a chill along the reader's spine-- the source of artistic delight, as Nabokov would have it. That's the kind of writing that most interests me.

You will die, and I, and all we can create—why not a city? But if there is one thing that deserves to be immortal, it is knowledge.

Lefever describes his financing plan with modesty:"'Our detailed budget is realistic, but does not take into account the inflation that may occur before September 1983. The one place it could cut or reduce is item 7, the simultaneous interpreter services, if these services could be provided gratis by the U.S. government.'""In other words, the only way to make a saving on a U.S.-subsidized project is to take money out of another U.S.-subsidized column.