When things are baffling they usually don't unbaffle themselves.There's just, you know, a certain amount of baffling stuff that always, like, really baffles you, and I've found that it's best to accept bafflement whenever it comes along, and then move on.

You can't always win arguments as a writer, but you have to just go ahead and say, well, I'm doing it that way anyway.

With blue vinyl-tile floor, pale-green wainscoating, pink walls, a yellow ceiling, and orange-and-white stork-patterned drapes, the expectant fathers' lounge churned with the negative energy of color overload. It would have served well as the nervous-making set for a nightmare about a children's-show host who led a secret life as an ax murderer. The chain-smoking clown didn't improve the ambience.

What looks tragic might be comic on second consideration, and what is comic might bring tears in time.

Human beings are such knotted, desperate pieces of work-it's a rare thing to know one completely, to the core, and still love him.

What we do as a society is seek simple answers.

Some lives, conducted with grace, are beautiful arcs bridging this world to eternity.