People aren't either wicked or noble. They're like chef's salads, with good things and bad things chopped and mixed together in a vinaigrette of confusion and conflict.

The way sadness works is one of the strange riddles of the world. If you are stricken with a great sadness, you may feel as if you have been set aflame, not only because of the enormous pain, but also because your sadness may spread over your life, like smoke from an enormous fire.

There is no way of knowing for sure whether or not you can trust someone, for the simple reason that circumstances change all of the time.

After a certain age, you couldn't even say where you were from. You went someplace, and lived there. And then you went someplace else.

I gasped and pointed the way. I gave you an adventure, Ed, right in front of you but you never saw it until I showed you, and that's why we broke up.

A passport, as I'm sure you know, is a document that one shows to government officials whenever one reaches a border between two countries, so that the official can learn who you are, where you were born, and how you look when photographed unflatteringly.

I don't know why wicked places generally look wicked. You'd think they'd look nice, to fool people, but they hardly ever do.