Still, I never really mind bad service in a restaurant. It makes me feel better about not leaving a tip.

Human beings would split the atom and invent television, nylon, and instant coffee before they could figure out the age of their own planet.

Perhaps it's my natural pessimism, but it seems that an awfully large part of travel these days is to see things while you still can.

There are only three things that can kill a farmer: lightning, rolling over in a tractor, and old age.

For anyone of a rational disposition, fashion is often nearly impossible to fathom. Throughout many periods of history – perhaps most – it can seem as if the whole impulse of fashion has been to look maximally ridiculous. If one could be maximally uncomfortable as well, the triumph was all the greater.

The average Southerner has the speech patterns of someone slipping in and out of consciousness. I can change my shoes and socks faster than most people in Mississippi can speak a sentence.

No one knows, incidentally, why Australia's spiders are so extravagantly toxic; capturing small insects and injecting them with enough poison to drop a horse would appear to be the most literal case of overkill. Still, it does mean that everyone gives them lots of space.