No degree of prosperity can be sufficient to eliminate all misfortune, and sloth is impervious to opportunity.

Writing isn't a source of pain. It's psychic chemotherapy. It reduces your psychological tumors and relieves your pain.

Strangely enough, for many many years I didn't talk about my childhood and then when I did I got a ton of mail - literally within a year I got a couple of thousand letters from people who'd had a worse childhood, a similar childhood, a less-bad childhood, and the question that was most often posed to me in those letters was: how did you get past the trauma of being raised by a violent alcoholic?

I'm alive but I have no life. I'm alive but also dead. I'm dead and alive.

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

Rub-a-dub-dub. Cerebrum in a tub.

It's only life. We all get through it. Not all of us complete the journey in the same condition. Along the way, some lose their legs or eyes in acidents or altercations, while others skate through the years with nothing worse to worry about than an occassional bad-hair day. I still possessed both legs and both eyes, and even my hair looked all right when I rose that Wednesday morning in late January. If I returned to bed sixteen hours later, having lost all my hair but nothing else, I would consider the day a triumph. Even minus a few teeth, I'd call it a triumph.