The only place where you can really surprise or shock the reader, or make someone laugh, is on the lower righthand corner - the very last panel - so as you turn the page, the payoff is in the upper lefthand panel. To pace every story so that there's a setup and a payoff at the page turn was a huge challenge; it's a part of the medium and you really have to learn what can be done in the medium.

Fertility says, "Can you relax and just let things happen?" I ask, does she mean, like disasters, like pain, like misery? Can I just let all that happen? "And Joy," she says, "and Serenity, and Happiness, and Contentment." She says all the wings of the Columbia Memorial Mausoleum. "You don't have to control everything," she says. "You can't control everything." But you can be ready for disaster. A sign goes by saying, Buckle Up. "If you worry about disaster all of the time, that's what you are going to get," Fertility says.

I didn't use anybody's story. I used the context and the structure of the situation. People were so, so desperate to tell their story and begin to digest their experience - like turning it into a story - that after the fist few weeks I could go with a pad and pencil and take notes. People didn't seem at all bothered by that.

Katherine Kenton remains among the generation of women who feel that the most sincere form of flattery is the male erection.

Be famous. Be a big social experiment in getting what you don't want. Find value in what we've been taught is worthless. Find good in what the world says is evil. I'm giving you my life because I want the whole world to know you. I wish the whole world would embrace what it hates. Find what you're afraid of most and go live there.

It only takes one mistake and nothing else you ever do will matter. No matter how hard you work or how smart you become, you'll always be known for that one poor choice.

In the world I see you are stalking elk through the damp canyon forests around the ruins of Rock feller Center. You'll wear leather clothes that will last you the rest of your life. You'll climb the wrist-thick kudzu vines that wrap the Sears Towers. And when you look down, you'll see tiny figures pounding corn, laying stripes of venison on the empty car pool lane of some abandoned superhighways.