If God is an author and the universe is the biggest novel ever written, I may feel as if I'm the lead character in the story, but like every man and woman on Earth, I am a suporting player in one of billions of subplots. You know what happens to supporting players. Too often they are killed off in chapter 3, or in chapter 10, or in chapter 35. A supporting player always has to be looking over his shoulder.

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

Any drunk who has tried to put his car where a lamppost stands is a self-educated physicist.

For some, the past is a chain, each day a link, raveling backward to one ringbolt or another, in one dark place or another, and tomorrow is a slave to yesterday.

The most identifying trait of humanity is our abilty to be inhumane to one another.

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

Wealth is power, and power is the only thing about which contemporary culture cares.