Despite all our toil and progress, the art of medicine still falls somewhere between trout casting and spook writing.

Innocent people can get into terrible jams, too. One false move and you're in over your head.

They're a symbol of the whole town, pretending to fight, love, weep and laugh all the time - and they're phonies, all of them. And I head the list...their phony hearts were dripping with the milk of human kindness.

Prejudice is a raft onto which the shipwrecked mind clambers and paddles to safety.

H.L.Mencken's war aims, according to the handful of observers who deigned to notice his conflict, were the overthrow of American Democracy, the Christian religion, and the YMCA. He was also credited with trying to wipe out poets and luncheon orators.

I have known a handful of producers who actually were equal or superior to the writers with whom they worked. These producers were a new kind of nonwriting writer hatched by the movies - as Australia produced wingless birds. They wrote without pencils or even words. Using a sort of mime-like talent, they could make up things like writers.

Chicago is a sort of journalistic Yellowstone Park, offering haven to a last herd of fantastic bravos.