The whole idea of hobknobbing and schmoozing and the concept of an "elite" class of celebrities better than the common people has always made my stomach turn.

Ms. Wormwood: Calvin, can you tell us what Lewis and Clark did? Calvin: No, but I can recite the secret superhero origin of each member of Captain Napalm's Thermonuclear League of Liberty. Ms. Wormwood: See me after class, Calvin. Calvin: [retrospectively] I'm not dumb. I just have a command of thoroughly useless information.

Boy, there's nothing worse than an inscrutable omen.

Since September it's just gotten colder and colder. There's less daylight now, I've noticed too. This can only mean one thing - the sun is going out. In a few more months the Earth will be a dark and lifeless ball of ice. Dad says the sun isn't going out. He says its colder because the earth's orbit is taking us farther from the sun. He says winter will be here soon. Isn't it sad how some people's grip on their lives is so precarious that they'll embrace any preposterous delusion rather than face an occasional bleak truth?

The real fun of living wisely is that you get to be smug about it.

I'm crying because out there he's gone, but he's not gone inside me.

Getting an inch of snow is like winning 10 cents in the lottery.