It is always quietly thrilling to find yourself looking at a world you know well but have never seen from such an angle before.

Four times I was honked at for having the temerity to proceed through town without the benefit of metal.

Beulah has a husband?' I know. It's a miracle. There can't be more than two people on the planet who'd be willing to sleep with her, and here we are both in the same town.

As James Surowiecki noted in a New Yorker article, given a choice between developing antibiotics that people will take every day for two weeks and antidepressants that people will take every day for ever, drug companies not surprisingly opt for the latter. Although a few antibiotics have been toughened up a bit, the pharmaceutical industry hasn't given us an entirely new antibiotic since the 1970s.

It's an unnerving thought that we may be the living universe's supreme achievement and its worst nightmare simultaneously.

Everything seems to be designed for the benefit of the automobile and not the benefit of the human being.

Maine is wonderful. It can be very hard. I mean, if you look at the profile maps it doesn't look it, but somehow when you get out there it's really steep and hard.