I normally can't stand vice-free people. They conflate a narcissistic instinct for self-preservation with moral superiority. Plus, they suck the life right out of a party.

You've learned that every good lie is threaded with truth and every accepted truth leaks lies.

I believe in God. Maybe not the Catholic God or even the Christian one because I have a hard time seeing any God as elitist. I also have a hard time believing that anything that created rain forests and oceans and an infinite universe would, in the same process, create something as unnatural as humanity in its own image. I believe in God, but not as a he or she or an it, but as something that defines my ability to conceptualize within the rather paltry frames of reference I have on hand.

The foundation of your life is luck. Hard work and talent make up the difference.

Or maybe I'd do what I always do - hang out and see what develops. Fatalist to the core.

The loneliness of another can be shocking when it lays itself bare without warning.

Grief, he said, is carnivorous.